Last night, the Associated
Press — on a day when nobody voted — surprised everyone
by abruptly
declaring the Democratic Party primary over and Hillary Clinton the victor.
The decree, issued the night before the California primary in which polls show
Clinton and Bernie Sanders in a very close race, was based on the media
organization’s survey of “superdelegates”: the Democratic Party’s 720 insiders,
corporate donors, and officials whose votes for the presidential nominee count
the same as the actually elected delegates. AP claims that superdelegates who
had not previously announced their intentions privately told AP reporters that
they intend to vote for Clinton, bringing her over the threshold. AP is
concealing the identity of the decisive superdelegates who said this.
Although the Sanders campaign rejected
the validity of AP’s declaration — on the ground that the
superdelegates do not vote until the convention and he intends to try to
persuade them to vote for him — most major media outlets followed the
projection and declared Clinton
the winner.
This is the perfect symbolic
ending to the Democratic Party primary: The nomination is consecrated by a
media organization, on a day when nobody voted, based on secret discussions
with anonymous establishment insiders and donors whose identities the media
organization — incredibly — conceals. The decisive edifice of superdelegates is
itself anti-democratic and inherently corrupt: designed to prevent actual
voters from making choices that the party establishment dislikes. But for a
party run by insiders and funded by corporate interests, it’s only fitting that
its nomination process ends with such an ignominious, awkward, and
undemocratic sputter.
None of this is to deny that
Hillary Clinton — as was always the case from the start — is highly likely to
be the legitimately chosen winner of this process. It’s true that the
party’s governing rules are deliberately undemocratic; unfair and
even corrupt decisions were repeatedly made by party officials to benefit Clinton;
and the ostensibly neutral Democratic National Committee (led by the
incomparably heinous Debbie Wasserman Schultz) constantly put not just its
thumb but its entire body on the scale to ensure she won. But it’s also true
that under the long-standing rules of the party, more people who voted
preferred Clinton as their nominee over Sanders. Independent of
superdelegates, she just got more votes. There’s no denying that.
And just as was true in 2008
with Obama’s nomination, it should be noted that standing alone — i.e., without
regard to the merits of the candidate — Clinton’s nomination is an
important and positive milestone. Americans, being Americans, will almost
certainly overstate its world significance and wallow in excessive
self-congratulations: Many countries on the planet have elected women as their leaders,
including
many whose close family member had
not previously served as president. Nonetheless, the U.S. presidency still
occupies an extremely influential political and cultural position in the
world. Particularly for a country with such an oppressive
history on race and gender, the election of the first African-American
president and nomination of the first female presidential candidate of a
major party is significant in shaping how people all over the world, especially
children, view their own and other people’s potential and
possibilities. But that’s all the more reason to lament this dreary
conclusion.
That the Democratic Party
nominating process is declared to be over in such an uninspiring,
secretive, and elite-driven manner is perfectly symbolic of what the party, and
its likely nominee, actually is. The one positive aspect, though
significant, is symbolic, while the actual substance — rallying behind a Wall
Street-funded, status quo-perpetuating, multimillionaire militarist — is grim
in the extreme. The Democratic Party got exactly the ending it deserved.
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