By Staff
Hillary Clinton apparently knows something the rest of us don't in deciding to fight on when she has essentially been mathematically eliminated from contention for the Democratic nomination. Michigan and Florida can't save the former first lady's campaign.
The Democratic Party's 30-member Rules and Bylaws Committee, which interprets and enforces party rules, meets at the end of May to consider what to do about Michigan's and Florida's 368 delegates.
Clinton, of course, wants them seated in accordance with their primaries, as though she won them, even though Barack Obama wasn't even on the ballot.
The panel, which has 13 members publicly supporting her, to eight for him, already imposed the harshest penalty it could against the two states for scheduling primaries in January, rather than wait until after Feb. 5 as instructed.
Michigan and Florida lost all their delegates to the national convention for jumping the gun.
All the Democratic candidates agreed to avoid the two states, stripping them of the influence they craved and rewarding it to Indiana, which didn't vote until May 6.
Clinton, who down the stretch styled herself as Rocky, has been arguing that she leads in popular votes, but for that to be true, Michigan and Florida must be included, then it's less than 5,000 votes out of 34 million cast.
So Clinton forges on, intent on accomplishing through backroom legal maneuvering what she was unable to with old-fashioned voting. That's the sad state of our politics.
Counting the ballots is not necessarily the end of an election. In 2000, we endured hanging chads and the Florida secretary of state and the U.S. Supreme Court decided the White House race. In 2004, it looked like John Kerry's campaign might continue indefinitely in court sorting out Ohio results.
Now it's 2008, with Americans riveted to the most exciting presidential scramble in memory, and the Democratic nod will be in the hands of the party's Rules and Bylaws Committee.
This slimy superdelegate system is a lawless Wild West.
No rules prevent steering favors or even cash to the uncommitted.
So much for democracy if actual votes matter less than who counts them.