The title of this piece is an exact quote of a comment I received from a Clinton supporter, directed to Sanders supporters. Taking the lead from Clinton herself, the response to us from Clinton supporters regarding any sort of overture from her side towards Sanders supporters is “she’s winning” and today it was that we “don’t matter”.
People want to rewrite history, inventing this gracious version of Clinton who lobbed only cotton balls at Obama after it was clear that he was winning. I realize the narrative is that Sanders has been horrible to Clinton, but Clinton and Obama were far nastier to one another than Sanders and Clinton have been. Clinton and Obama went all out. Obama claimed that Clinton changed her positions based on the polls, that she was a phony on guns (“Annie Oakley”), Clinton’s campaign ridiculed Obama as an inexperience lightweight ‘fairy tale’ — and that’s just the soft stuff. Clinton’s campaign set out to paint Obama as not “American”, and surrogates repeatedly floated that he was a Muslim. One of her top campaign managers ended up quitting after floating the claim that he’d sold cocaine in college.
Obama had every reason to hold a grudge against Clinton over the dog whistle, character slamming campaign she ran against him. He and his supporters had every reason to say “You aren’t entitled to anything from us”. That he did not says a lot about the grace and class in his character.
Here is something I found and have been posted for several days now. No one seems to want to grasp what it says, and what it tells us about Hillary Clinton. It is from 2008. Obama had won and there was no path to victory for Clinton. She had held out until the very last primary, long after the media and others had begun the drum beat for her to bow out, during which time she did not temper her message in the least. She continued to claim she was the better candidate, that Obama was inexperienced, and she evoked “Mission Accomplished” to slam him for holding a rally to celebrate earning a majority of delegates. And she talked about lobbying the Superdelegates to switch to her because she had a better chance of winning in the GE. She pulled no punches even when it was clear he was going to be the nominee.
The night of the final primary, where it was clear she was done, rather than concede, she said she was not going to make any decisions that night. I’m not sure what decisions she needed to make — she lost and should have conceded then and there.
Instead, she left the scene for a few days, arranged for a meeting with Obama, emerged from that ready to support him.
Barring an unforeseen collapse on Obama's part, Clinton won't win; Obama wound up with 136 more delegates than needed to clinch the nomination, and there are no signs of any defections.
But the purpose of the exercise is to resolve a nagging political problem for the Obama campaign and the Democratic Party. Since Obama locked down the nomination in June, some Clinton loyalists have been slow to embrace his candidacy. The two campaigns believe that by setting aside time to acknowledge Clinton, the party stands a better chance of avoiding a fractious scene on the convention floor and of emerging from the convention united.
Aides to Clinton and Obama said the two sides had been working cooperatively and were both satisfied with the arrangement.
"With every voice heard and the party strongly united, we will elect Sen. Obama president of the United States," Clinton said in a statement released by the two campaigns.
Clinton had pointed to the restiveness of her supporters in an appearance at a private home last month, saying they needed "a catharsis" before falling in line behind Obama. A video of Clinton's remarks was posted on YouTube.
If past practice holds, Clinton will be the focus of nominating and seconding speeches by people she designates before the roll-call vote.
Clinton herself will address the delegates in prime time on the second night of the convention, Tuesday, Aug. 26. Her husband, former President Clinton, will speak the following night. Discussions are also taking place about whether daughter Chelsea Clinton will get a speaking slot.
Bill Whalen, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, a public policy research center at Stanford University, said: "Obama's people know that they have not closed the deal with Hillary voters the way they would like, and they just can't afford to do anything -- real or perceived -- that upsets Mrs. Clinton and her followers. So they have more than bent over to accommodate her."
articles.latimes.com/...
It doesn’t matter that she was closer in delegates to Obama than Sanders is to her, or how many popular votes she won. In the end, she lost the race. She zealously represented her supporters even in defeat, and Obama showed the strength of his character and his political savvy when he turned around and embraced her and her supporters. He even helped her raise funds to pay off her campaign debt. He could have simply said “I won” and turned his back on her.
And that is what her supporters seem to feel she should do, and that is what she has broadcast that she will do. When asked how she might reach out to Sanders supporters, her response was “I’m winning”. Why reach out to the losing side?
Obama showed us why, and he earned a lot of support when he did it. He showed what it means to be a leader. You fight hard for the nomination, give and take your share of lumps, and when the angry primary rhetoric is over, it’s over, and you reach out and help your opponent back up so you can work together in the GE. You recognize that you may have won but a hell of a lot of important voices are entitled to feel they’ve been heard. Presidents have gone so far as to choose Vice Presidents because they understood this.
But we are hearing that we don’t matter, that the DNC isn’t interested in hearing what we have to say at the convention, that Sanders will be woefully unrepresented in the platform committees, that he and his supporters need to sit down and shut up. He has lost and his revolution has failed and he and his supporters deserve nothing, not even a passing nod to New Deal-style Democracy in the platform.
This is petty and shallow and politically dumb. And Clinton knows it, because she stayed in and fought hard until every last vote was counted, and held out for having “every voice heard” when they were the voices of the people who voted for her.
She should in the very least understand — and support — Sanders’ desire to do that for his supporters as well. She doesn’t have to live up to Obama’s example, but some level of respect is in order.