Today I am incredibly angry. I try not to write in anger because strong emotions often lead to statements that are either unintended or of a magnitude much greater than intended. So it is with great disappointment that today I will leave the Democratic party. It is not a decision I take lightly but the lack of leadership at the highest levels in this party is very disturbing. Only individuals lacking in personal and political courage could allow the intra-party fight to reach the level that it has at this point. This brings me to the title of this diary.
Lack of Leadership from the Democratic Party
A brief scan of Wikipedia says the following regarding the discharge of public obligations according to common law, custom or statute. Misfeasance is determined in relation to privity of contract. When a contract creates a duty that does not exist at common law, the parties can do one of three things: (1) perform the duty fully; (2) perform the duty inadequately or poorly; or (3) fail to perform the duty at all. When a party fails to perform at all, it is nonfeasance. When a party performs the duty inadequately or poorly, it is misfeasance. Malfeasance is used to denote outright sabotage which causes intentional damage. I believe the Democratic party is failing its constituency by definition of at least one of these mechanisms.
After listening to both Howard Dean and Tim Russert this morning, I am even less inclined to believe there will be a positive resolution to this Democratic nomination. When asked whether there was someone in the Democratic leadership who could put a halt to the infighting and bring the party together, Tim’s answer was a flat NO. I, unfortunately have to agree.
As several diaries have noted earlier, Barack Obama will almost undoubtedly win the nomination according to the rules of common sense and the Democratic party. While he has not and cannot reach the number of pledged delegates needed to lock up the nomination based entirely upon the primaries still to come, he has a virtually insurmountable lead heading into the Convention. There are those who will cheer Hillary Clinton on and fawn over her perceived "toughness" as a candidate and express admiration that she was unwilling to let go of the nomination and fought hard for it. I cannot fault her for the desire to hang onto the nomination. I can and do fault both she and her husband for the tactics used to acquire it. There are tactics, as Gary Hart noted in his Huffington Post piece, that are appropriate for a general election against the opposition party and then there are tactics that one uses within party against a colleague with whom you will need to work with one day because one o f you may become President and the other will be in the Senate and nothing of meaning will get accomplished without your combined efforts.
To suggest that your competitor is less qualified to become president than someone of the opposing party is beyond the pale. To allow one of your surrogates to suggest your competitor is "lucky" to be a black man in America, as though this were his only qualification and to have a series of statements along these lines come out since January, when we learned of the forwarding of emails by Hillary's campaign suggesting Barack Obama was a Muslim/Manchurian candidate, to the antics in SC where Bill Clinton suggested he had won primarily because of race by bringing up Jesse Jackson, exceeds the boundary of appropriate tactics. I have been disappointed by these events but never considered a departure from the party on this basis.
That said, most disappointing to me this morning is the absolute lack of leadership from the Democratic party on this issue. If anyone in a leadership position who has not chosen sides to date had stepped up to the plate and utilized whatever authority they have to squelch this matter behind the scenes, we would not see a party almost literally engaged in a suicide pact. I will make no pretense about who I hold responsible for this debacle. As Hillary’s chances to win this nomination have declined, she has become more divisive. The Obama campaign initially refused the bait and was defined as unable to fight back. They have recently begun to respond in kind and low and behold, there is suddenly "concern" by the media that the race has become too divisive for the party to withstand. Newsflash, the problem existed before today. The new NBC/WSJ poll bears this out, as more voters believe that a protracted nomination fight is hurting the party more than helping it. This pretense that a protracted fight will lead to party building in the upcoming states is just that, pretense. Instead of a well-funded, unified party, we have a divided party spending millions of dollars to perform John McCain’s job for him by attacking each other for next several months.
Well, I am done. I can no longer tolerate the lack of leadership. Howard Dean, whom I initially supported in the last election, has been a significant disappointment on these issues. He appears to simply refuse to acknowledge that there is a problem. The assumption that incendiary comments made in March will somehow be forgotten by November is unrealistic. I hope for the sake of the party that it does get resolved by then but I am no longer optimistic about this outcome. But neither will I serve as an enabler by continuing to be a party to this political malpractice and malfeasance, nonfeasance and/or misfeasance.