The Literary Divide/Dr. Paul Barrows
  Senator Hillary Clinton’s campaign for the Presidency is beginning to mirror, more and more, the strategy used by the Bush Administration in defining what
actually constitutes “success” in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Remember how the Bush/Cheney axis moved the goal posts in defining victory in Iraq,
morphing it from “finding and destroying weapons of mass destruction” to “promoting democracy” to “fighting Al-Qaeda” and “terrorism” to supporting the current
“surge” to maintain “stability” to the last resort which is “not losing?”  
    The campaign for 2008 was supposed to be handed to Sen. Clinton on a platter. Victory was assured with the prowess of the mighty Clinton Machine by
Super Tuesday, if not sooner. Only problem is that she got steam-rolled by the Obama phenomenon. Sen. Obama has been able to win primaries in states in the
Northeast, South, Midwest and West. He has won the favor of the vast majority Black voters from all over the country who were initially skeptical about his
chances of becoming the first Black President of this nation. In what has been perhaps the most significant accomplishment of the Obama odessy, in an
unprecedented achievement, he has won the support of a large number of White male voters, particularly in southern states like Georgia and Alabama. Sen.
Obama has brought in enormous numbers of new, young voters who have brought huge amounts of energy and enthusiasm to his campaign. Obama has also set
records in the amount of funds that he has raised and with the number of grassroots supporters who have used the internet to donate to his campaign.
    Sen. Obama’s lead over Sen. Clinton has now become insurmountable. Obama has won more primaries and caucuses; he has won more than twice as many
states as Hillary; he has substantial leads in the number of delegates and in the popular vote.
    For Sen. Clinton, the goal posts have to be moved, given that it is now clear that she cannot win a sufficient number of delegates to overtake Obama’s lead in
the remaining primaries. For Clinton, this is no longer a race for delegates. In an interview in the Washington Post, Sen. Clinton posited that she will remain in
the race all the way to the Democratic Convention saying, with support from her husband Bill, let the Credentials Committee decide.  The strategy is to put the
focus on the Super Delegates, the party insiders who have close ties to the Clinton Machine —a large number of whom come out and supported Sen. Clinton
even before she could “earn” that support before the start of the ‘08 Primary Campaign.   
    Clinton is arguing that they should support her because she has “won the larger states” while Obama has won smaller states that won’t really count in the
Presidential election. President Clinton has taken this logic even further by stating that Hillary has won more “electoral” votes than Obama with her wins in the
larger states. Only problem is that they are not in the presidential election, they are in the primaries. President Clinton has further posited that if the Democrats
had the same “winner-take-all” strategy that the Republicans had in their primaries, Hillary would be ahead of Obama in the number of delegates and the
popular vote. These arguments falsely and arrogantly assume that Sen. Obama cannot defeat Sen. John McCain in the Presidential election in the larger states
despite the fact that Obama is now leading both Sen. Clinton and Sen. McCain head to head in national polls.    
    Another prong in this false strategy is to try to “push the game into extra innings” by forcing the issue of holding additional primaries in Michigan and Florida.
The strategy calls for blaming Obama for “disenfranchising” the voters in both of those states by not agreeing to hold additional contests with funds provided by
big-pocket supporters of the Clintons. Only problem is that both the Clinton and the Obama campaigns signed-off on the rules and accepted the sanctions that
the Democratic National Committee (DNC) took to penalize the Florida and Michigan Delegations.   
    More and more of the high-powered leaders in the Democratic Party such as Senators Patrick Leahy, Bill Bradley and Mario Cuomo are calling for Sen.
Clinton to throw in the towel. Editorial writers in the New York Times, which had initially endorsed Senator Clinton, are now calling for her to end her campaign.
Maureen Dowd, in her column, “Surrender Already Dorothy” has said:  “Despite Bill Clinton’s saying it was ‘a bunch of bull’ that his wife should drop out,
Democrats are tying to sneak up on Hillary, throw a burlap sack over her head, carry her off the field and stick her in a Saddam spider hole until after the Denver
convention.”   
    Sen. Clinton’s campaign is now in the bottom of the 9th inning yet it continues to refuse to accept defeat. She is determined to take the game into extra
innings. The only problem is that you can’t take the game into extra innings when it is clear that the game isn’t tied.  Her strategy of blaming what has happened
in Florida and Michigan on Obama and minimizing the significance of his victories in “small insignificant states” smacks of cutting off your nose to spite your
face and will only prove to hurt the Democrats in the long run. Her effort this week to extend the “shelf-life” of the Rev. Wright controversy to draw attention away
from the tale she got caught telling about ducking sniper fire in Bosnia was disingenuous at best.  The time is now critical for Howard Dean and the Democratic
National Committee to exercise some leadership by stepping forward to end the carnage.  Dean has taken one important step in that direction by calling for the
Super Delegates to vote and end this process by July 1st. The Republicans, via Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, The National Review and the many others, are
hoping that the contest will be pushed all the way up to the Convention. They are hoping so in order to give them more time to play mischief with the political
process by calling for all Republicans in the remaining states where there are open primaries to vote for Sen. Clinton because, as recent polls have indicated,
she has high negatives and is the one force that can unite Republicans making her easier to defeat than Sen. Obama.   
    The goal posts can no longer be moved … there is no need for extra innings, the game is over and it is time to move on.
Moving the goal posts...calling for extra
innings...Game over