Losing with Grace and Dignity

My apologies for the delay between messages. We have been traveling, and we have finally landed in our apartment in Paris where we have easy access to the Internet and the media. It does amaze me at times how integrated we are into the news network where ever we go. I really appreciate all of the comments and encouragement some of you have provided me. I am enjoying the process of writing so regularly, and it gets easier as I go along. Equally, it gives me a wonderful opportunity to communicate with many old friends, and some new ones, and that has proven very nice as well. So, thank you!

Losing with Grace and Dignity:
Senator Hillary Clinton has lost. The prolonged primary struggle is all but over, except for the fact that she, her advisors and supporters cannot yet accept the reality of losing. They are still looking for one last chance, one long shot final bite at the apple, and they appear willing to do almost anything to reverse an outcome that has been moving against her for a while now. The issue now is “how” she will lose, not “whether.” Will she go out with grace and dignity, supporting the Democratic Party, or will she engage in a continuing war that inflicts even more damage on the Democratic chances in November. The existing polarization of the voting electorate has been bad enough, with large segments of each camp threatening to defect to McCain if their candidate loses, but the continuation of this out to the Convention will be far worse.

Unfortunately, all of the scuttlebutt at the moment, inside and outside their campaign, points toward the conclusion that the Clintons are looking at the so-called “nuclear option” as a way to reverse the judgment of the electorate. The "nuclear option" calls for the National Credentials Committee, on which she has strong support, to reverse the decision made earlier on Florida and Michigan and seat those delegations using the voting outcome to determine the distribution of supporters. I do not need to tell you how unfair that would be, given that Obama and the other candidates played by the rules that the DNC set up, taking their names off the ballot and not campaigning.

Observers are calling it “the nuclear option” because any fair and reasonable person will recognize the utter devastation that this tactic will produce inside the Democratic Party. With near certainty, this action, if successful, will provoke a convention war that will make the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago look like a picnic. The use of this tactic to win what she could not win fairly in the primaries will tear the Democratic Party apart and almost certainly guarantee a Republican victory in November.

What Does This Say About Senator Hillary Clinton?
Personally, I think any sane and reasonable person ought to be profoundly troubled about what this "considered course of action" says about Hillary Clinton and some of her advisors as an ethical human beings. We all admire the spirit of a good fighter, and she has proven that beyond any question. However, when a person pursues a course of action that benefits primarily themselves to the detriment of nearly everyone else, that person moves beyond of boundaries of enlightened self-interest into the realm of destructive narcissism. It makes one wonder if there is anything that Hillary Clinton will not do to win, and that is an issue that has plagued the Clintons for a long time?

Up to this point, my own opinion is that this primary contest has been hard fought, but mostly fairly fought. The policy differences between Senators Obama and Clinton are relatively minor. With small policy differences, it is not surprising that much of the campaign centered on issues of character, judgment, experience, associations, and personal history. These differences are more easily discernible than are the differences on policy, and they were of more interest to the media, who cannot hold an audience by repeating endlessly the policy positions of the candidates when there is little difference. Neither of the candidates attacked the other in terms that were outrageous. There was negative campaigning, but much less than what we have come to expect of most political campaigns, and certainly much less that either candidate will experience at the hands of the Republican “attack machine” in the fall.

However, this campaign now needs to come to an end, and it would be far better for everyone, including Senator Clinton in the long run, if she ended this campaign with grace and dignity. If she chooses to drag this out through a fight on the Credentials Committee and then on to the Democratic National Convention in August, she will still lose but she will lose leaving a bitter taste in everyone’s mouth that will be remembered for a long time to come.

The Response of the Democratic Leadership:
I actually do not think Senator Clinton is going to be successful with her “nuclear strategy”. It is so clearly not in the interest of the leadership of the Democratic Party, and it is not in the interest of the Super delegates – not even the ones who are currently supporting Hillary Clinton. While no one is likely to attempt to force Hillary Clinton out of the game, I believe that you will see an acceleration of the declarations of the Super delegates as it becomes clear to them that the outcome of the election is already determined. The more “elder statesmen” of the Democratic Party are just too smart to support an effort to reverse the outcome on Florida and Michigan in the Credentials Committee. A vote may occur, but the motion will lose, or any seating that might occur will leave the margin between the two candidates as it is. Anything else would be a degree of political insanity and self-destructiveness that exceeds what I can imagine for the members of that committee.

The Irreversible Tipping Point of Building a Majority:
Another consideration is that Barak Obama may have already reached the tipping point in his quest for delegates such that the pressure to join his “team” simply becomes irresistible. This is largely a “perceptual” issue – the belief that the outcome is virtually impossible to reverse.

Listening to the media, I think that point has already passed for more and more delegates. Obama is only 11 delegates behind Clinton in Super delegates as of this morning, and his campaign is gaining Super delegates on a daily basis. Many delegates will not want to be left off the Obama ship when it leaves the wharf, and the pressure on these delegates will increase as he moves closer to an outright win, which he will with every primary, regardless of the outcome.

The Alternative to Grace and Dignity:
Hillary Clinton today faces not a choice between winning and losing; but a choice on how she will lose – with grace and dignity or badly. I would wish for her that she chooses the former, but I see no sign of it at the moment. There is an increasing desperation about this campaign; a sense that if they lose, they will all lose everything.

I suspect that this is true for both of the Clintons. Hilary Clinton is losing the Presidency that she seems to have thought was hers by right. She would have been the first female President of the United States, transcending the success of her husband and putting him in the background. For Bill Clinton, he would return to the White House and travel the world as one of the most prominent and powerful people in the world. It is truly heady stuff, and a terrible thing to lose to an upstart African-American that not many people even knew before the campaign began. At the same time, none of us know what discussions are taking place behind the public scenes of the campaign, and those discussions may well involve negotiations that would provide Clinton a graceful exit, perhaps in exchange for the Vice Presidency or some other considerations.

If she ends this war now, every effort will be made to heal the breaches in the Democratic Party, and that would certainly include reaching out to her and some of her key supporters. Every effort would also be made to provide roles for the Clinton that could help to end the divisions that have emerged in this long campaign. However, if this continues, it will degenerate into more ugliness, and the outcome must inevitably be the political isolation of the Clintons through the campaign and into the future. Taking this out to the bitter end will make it very difficult to achieve a reconciliation that might pull the Clintons into the effort in the fall.

What Senator Clinton does not seem to understand, with her "Rocky" analogy, is there is such a thing as “wanting something too much,” which usually means wanting it so much that there are few boundaries around what one will do to achieve it. People have long suspected this of the Clintons, but the current Clinton strategy may confirm it in ways that will rebound to her detriment over the long run.

Just my opinion,

Gordon Black