Doing Anything to Win?

The big news for Democrats this morning is former presidential candidate Bill Richardson throwing his support behind Obama. It's another blow to Clinton's candidacy. Over the next few days it's possible that many prominent democrats who have been on the sidelines will drop their impartiality. So big news.

But I wanted to draw your attention to another article in the Times. This one about the role that Hillary Clinton played in the Northern Ireland Accord. Reading that article it seems apparent that Clinton's claims of being intimately involved in the process and playing an important role are not an exaggeration. She may not have been at the top of the food-chain, but she was on the scene and she was very involved in one of the more triumphant foreign-policy achievements of the Clinton administration.

The part of the article I found most significant:

The Obama campaign has responded by accusing Mrs. Clinton of exaggerating her specific role and general experience. Some of the sharpest language has come in a memorandum written by Greg Craig, a foreign policy adviser to Mr. Obama...

“It is a gross overstatement of the facts for her to claim even partial credit for bringing peace to Northern Ireland,” Mr. Craig wrote in the foreign policy memorandum, which has been distributed to reporters. Though Mrs. Clinton traveled abroad as first lady and had some contact with Irish women’s groups, he added, “at no time did she play any role in the critical negotiations that produced the peace.”

So that's basically a slander against Hillary Clinton because she's a woman, right? If I'm not misreading that memo, it's basically saying "Hillary may have done some women-y stuff while the men were making everything happen. She couldn't have been involved in important decisions."

It's misogynistic and, judging from the article, a fabrication. The author disparages a fellow democrat, calls her a liar, and smears her reputation in order to win a few political points for his candidate.

This comes directly from the Obama campaign.

Should She Quit?

At this point it's become clear that, barring something ridiculous happening, Hillary Clinton will not catch Barack Obama's delegate count. Since neither Florida nor Michigan will re-run their primaries, there's even less room for Clinton to make any dents in Obama's lead. But on the other hand Obama wont be able to pull away over the next few months.

In my experience, and to my knowledge, this is an unprecedented situation. We have two candidates who can both claim to be the choice of half the party. Hillary could bow out at this point, but why wouldn't that be abandoning the 49% of the democratic party that supports her?

Before Ferraro had her little race-based implosion, she wrote an op-ed piece in the NY Times about the origins of the super delegate system. This is what she said:

Today, with the possibility that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama will end up with about the same number of delegates after all 50 states have held their primaries and caucuses, the pundits and many others are saying that superdelegates should not decide who the nominee will be. That decision, they say, should rest with the rank-and-file Democrats who went to the polls and voted.

But the superdelegates were created to lead, not to follow. They were, and are, expected to determine what is best for our party and best for the country.

Clinton is not washed up in any measure. So bowing out now, while noble, isn't at all necessary. The super delegates will end up deciding this. And it would be a violation of their duty if, instead of making up their own minds, they bowed to "the will of the people".

The people are speaking with two voices and neither side will give in. It's up to the super delegates to break the tie.

What now?

Woops! Hillary won in Ohio and Texas (the primary anyways), even though the pundits had already started writing her out of the script two weeks ago. It looks like the voting (and caucasing) dems are split pretty much down the middle on who they prefer. Oh the horror of the Democratic party having two legitimate candidates for President!

Without skipping a beat, the pundits switched the story from "OBAMAMANIA" to Democratic Deadlock; to wit, the dems were going to rip each other apart before the general election. It's plausible, since neither candidate will be able to claim the necessary delegates to win outright. But it's totally wrong.

It ignores the fact that Hillary and Barack are both very popular among democrats. And that, odds are good that outside the campaign they have a cordial relationship. Obviously they are in competition, and so they are competitive. It's inevitable that each camp will have its partisans, but the press blows them up out of proportion. Reporting on a DNC civil war is way more interesting.

My father suggested to me that the party leadership should work with both campaigns to ensure that the message remains "Whichever one of us you chose, you're in good hands." And, in the meantime, both candidates should treat McCain's candidacy as completely superfluous.

I completely agree and I think (and hope) the candidates understand that slinging mud between them will not make the difference. In the days before March 4th, it seems the Clinton campaign found that perfect pitch, in portraying her as the stronger candidate and Barack as not as clean as his press would indicate and without causing a negative "bitchiness" backlash. The Obama campaign, meanwhile, has struggled to regain its balance.

To the question of whether this is good or bad for the Democratic party. Certainly, Barack and Hillary have been campaigning for longer than anyone can believe (they started at the beginning of 2007!) and I think the tendency is to think that they are running out of time. A decision needs to be made now or all will be lost! Oh wait, it's five months until the Nominating Convention and then three more before the general election. And in that time, thanks to this excitingly close contest, voters will get to see the two most dynamic and interesting presidential candidates, the Democratic candidates, at their best while John McCain (occasionally dynamic) is left twiddling his thumbs on the sidelines waiting for his turn to play.

In short, strategically, the Dems are in a perfect position. As long as both Barack and Hillary are competing (which should be all the way to the convention) they get free and overwhelming press coverage and they energize the entire democratic base.

Wherefore Scrabulous?

There's a little snippet in the NY Times today about the Facebook application Scrabulous and how its creators are trying to extort money from the companies that own the rights to Scrabble.

On the one hand, Scrabulous is very often the only interesting thing that is happening on Facebook. So I would be sad to see it go.

On the other hand, dude, it's a total ripoff of Scrabble!

Speaking to the Scrabulous guys now: you're already (apparently) making wads of money, take the $10 million buyout or whatever and run! I don't even know why they're making an offer. For $50,000 they can get some other code-monkeys to clone your dinky little flash app and have Facebook shut you down for IP violations. Nobody on Facebook is going to care whether they're playing Scrabulous or Scrabble(TM).

Which, as of right now, is my odds-on favorite for how this is going to go down.