An Open Letter to the Democratic Party's Super Delegates

Jake Tapper of ABC News reports in his blog yesterday that the Clinton Campaign is pursuing the "Tonya Harding Option." Essentially that we have all missed the point first raised by Politico and then repeated by the pundits on the Sunday talk shows, Hillary Clinton cannot mathematically win this nomination. Tapper's interview with a high-ranking DNC official sums up this way-basically we are all missing the point. Clinton can still win the nomination its just a matter of what she is willing to do to win the nomination. Her not-so secret "kitchen sink" policy, is to stop at nothing to tear down the Obama campaign, from now to the convention.

So I come to the Super Delegates of the Democratic party and I ask them to carefully consider what kind of a party do they want to have going into this critical election cycle? It is easy to dismiss the Obama campaign for being based on nothing but rhetoric, but if that is the greatest flaw in a campaign is that really enough to dismiss it? In this week alone, Hillary Clinton has lied about her international experience, has called into question the role of pledged delegates in deciding the nomination, and reintroduced the Wright controversy to the campaign. All in an effort to win this nomination at any cost. If she somehow achieves this despite her negative rhetoric, her use of fear mongering, her pattern of bringing race just to the surface and then squashing it before real debate could ensue, it would be a travesty.

But there is something worse that would come of it. Her nomination would energize the McCain campaign more than anything he could muster himself. But Senator Clinton knows that, she sees the same polling numbers we do, and she knows how high her negatives are, and so she will tear down McCain the same way she's trying to tear down Obama. She will find subtle, yet constant ways of reminding us of his age, she will stop at nothing to tear down a decent man on her way to the presidency and in the process energize the republican party against her much the way her husband did. We will face another 4-8 years in Washington of gridlock and divisiveness as Clinton would have scorched much of the democratic party and enraged the entire republican party on her way to the presidency.

You all have the choice, you can undercut her monstrous rhetoric like Gov. Richardson did last week, you can stand with an agent of real change like Ted Kennedy and Senator Kerry have. You can support a nominee who is uniquely positioned to talk to voters across demographic lines, not just as a candidate, not just as a nominee, but eventually as President of the United States.

Or we can relive the battles of the 90's and George Bush's tenure in the White House, we can win in an electoral squeaker, and suffer through another presidential term or two that gets nothing done, where the huge problems of our times go unsolved. The choice is yours, but remember one last thing. If the choice were up to the pledged delegates, or the popular vote, we'd already know who the nominee would be.