So now the DNC's punishment of Florida and Michigan for flouting party rules on the scheduling of their primaries is, according to Senator Clinton, somehow akin to the situation in Zimbabwe.
Wow.
I'm not sure there is anyone who shouldn't be gravely insulted by that comparison.
First, it insults Zimbabweans. Here are people who have had their country destroyed by a kleptocratic dictator, who's economy has gone from among the most robust in Africa to one of the worst in just over a decade. Inflation is somewhere beyond the stratosphere, perhaps over the 20,000% (non-wartime) record (previously owned by Bolivia). Food is scarce-to-non-existent. The ruling party, trailing after the first round of the election, is rounding up, detaining, and torturing local opposition leaders in an operation the BBC has termed "electoral cleansing" (video).
And somehow this is the political and moral equivalent of the FL/MI delegate situation? Two states in which elected state-level party officials played a game of chicken with national-level party officials and lost is equivalent to physical violence by a government against its own people levied with an intent to disenfranchise?
Second, it insults Michiganders and Floridians. They know that Clintonites like Ickes and McAuliffe led the charge to strip their states' delegates from the convention. They know that their leaders made a failed gambit for greater electoral relevance. They probably even appreciate the irony that the one year they try to shake the curse of having a late primary is the one year that late primary states loom the largest in the nominating process. They also know that they can still vote in November, and that their still have their chance to vote out the party that has led this country so poorly. They know that Clinton's claims about disenfranchisment pale in comparison to Mugabe's intimidation efforts. They know that their opportunities are radically different from the types of choices Zimbabweans must face going forward.
Clinton told a bunch of retirees in Florida that in Zimbabwe,
Tragically, an election was held, the president lost, they refused to abide by the will of the people.
Of course this is a distortion in its own right. Mugabe lost the first round of an election, but his opponent failed to garner a majority of the votes (a plausible claim, given the presence of a Nader-like candidate, Simba Makoni, on the first round ballot; the government unfortunatley made it impossible to verify). The constitution of Zimbabwe -- you know, the rules of the game as agreed upon in advance, on which, Ms. Clinton, democracies are supposed to operate -- stipulates that if no one gets 50% in the first round, a second round run-off is required. Not a bad system, by-the-way. I'd bet more countries do it this way than do it the other way. Now the thing that is insulting to her retiree audience is the presumption that no one there would look it up and call her on it. In other words, it is a calculated dose of misinformation.
Third, it insults whomever else Hillary hopes this line of argument will persuade (presumably superdelegates, but the chattering classes as a whole, I suppose, are game). To make a facile parallel between one of the worst ruling parties in the world and the party of which she striving to bear the flag -- her own party, that is -- reveals that her fundamental strategy is to bully and blackmail her peers into throwing their support behind her. It may be that some people in the party will go for this. Most, however, will see it for what it is: a self-destructive campaign of vitriol and deceit meriting only condemnation.