With popular-vote and psychological momentum clearly in his favor, those of us supporting Barack Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination know that there is only one thing that can save Hillary Clinton: her deep ties to establishment politicians, especially in California.
The many elected officials here with connections to the Clinton machine -- key to her victory in the California primary while Obama has been winning most primaries and caucuses elsewhere -- have already sent the signal that they relish their role as powerbroker “superdelegates” who stand to have the last word in the convention backrooms if neither candidate gets there with a commanding majority of committed elected delegates.
In a characteristically arrogant interview with KCBS, Former Mayor Willie Brown said that participatory democracy has nothing to do with it. Without prompting, he even cited George Bush’s disputed win over Al Gore in 2000 as proof that under our system the popular vote is not what determines an election.
Boss Willie went on to tout the possible pivotal role of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi -- another Clinton supporter -- in swaying superdelegates, should the contest come down to that.
For Obama, the task is clear: continue to demonstrate so much appeal as a vote-getter and uniter of natural Democratic constituencies that the pressure on the Clintonites to refrain from Bill Belichick-style gamesmanship is relentless. Frankly, I don’t think the narcissistic First Couple are capable of discretion in their tactics, or shame of any kind. But forcing them to be graceful, or reveal their true colors in doing the opposite, is Obama’s ticket to the nomination.
The superdelegate card is a microcosm of the whole Clinton method, which is to use the sharpest and edgiest -- I would call them the sleaziest -- ways to achieve victory. The same mindset plays out in Clinton’s sneaky pseudo- campaigns in Michigan and Florida, where the party decertified primaries because those states broke rules by staging them early. In a scenario where every delegate is critical, Clinton now, no doubt, will wage a procedural and legal fight to seat the delegates she “won” there in primaries the candidates had pledged not to contest.
In a column in Monday’s Wall Street Journal, former solicitor general Theodore Olson, who represented Bush before the Supreme Court in the fight over the 2000 vote in Florida, has some fun at the expense of Clinton people, who must decide whether they now want to embrace the same scorched-earth constitutional interpretations they denounced eight years ago. Olson is snide, but on point.
It’s only fitting that Florida and California, which command so much of the nation’s population and dreamscape, will be critical in the climactic chapter of the Obama-Clinton showdown. This time, I think, the Golden State will be even more important than the Sunshine State. Our “progressive” leaders, from Willie Brown to Nancy Pelosi to Gavin Newsom to Ron Dellums and beyond, need to be held accountable if they’re even thinking about any monkey business with the presidential nominating process in the months ahead.