what it means to have the right to vote

The Democratic party seems confused about what it means to vote, to possess a vote, to cast a vote. Why we bother to hold elections.

If Obama is the Democratic party nominee, why would anyone in their right mind expect Hillary Clinton to be magically able to deliver votes? Does the party not get that we - voters - are each of us an independent creature, with a mind, with thoughts and feelings - and the right to cast our vote whatever way we want?

And yet I have heard this many times over. Hillary should. Hillary had better. Panic - Hillary won't.

Why would I want to vote for the Unity guy, if he isn't going to bother with coming to me himself and making me want to vote for him? It isn't Clinton's job to make me come round. I don't want it to be her job. I want my right to vote to continue to mean, as it used to mean, that I choose. I pick for myself where and how my vote goes. And why. I don't want to be, as Anglachel so perfectly puts it, "spoils of war". I don't want to be "delivered".

We do not live in a rotton borough where the votes are his to harvest. He is not entitled to the support of those who did not vote for him. He has to ask for those votes and he has to earn them. His job is to make himself an appealing candidate to the people he has spent months dismissing and insulting.

Why can't Obama just win over the voters? I mean, Obama being so awesome and all? He should have no problem, right?

Obama's finest speeches do not excite. They do not inform. They don't even really inspire. They elevate. They enmesh you in a grander moment, as if history has stopped flowing passively by, and, just for an instant, contracted around you, made you aware of its presence, and your role in it. He is not the Word made flesh, but the triumph of word over flesh, over color, over despair. The other great leaders I've heard guide us towards a better politics, but Obama is, at his best, able to call us back to our highest selves, to the place where America exists as a glittering ideal, and where we, its honored inhabitants, seem capable of achieving it, and thus of sharing in its meaning and transcendence.
-Ezra Klein (January)

People aren't talking of his divine properties anymore. It has become embarrassing. A man really so godlike shoulda been able to win more graciously. He was reluctant and grudging about granting her the right to compete, and even that much was obviously only because he had absolutely no choice in the matter: she refused to get out.

Obama did everything he could to delegitimize her and he wasn't above exploiting the belief that women have a special duty; he never said it right out loud but he played on it, and he played it hard. It came (and still comes) in the form of putting expectations on her that would not be put on a man* - expectations in the name of what is good for the party, which is conveniently defined as whatever is good for him.

Women worked hard to overcome this insistence that their first concern should be about elevating men, supporting men, making men strong. Women worked hard to overcome the view that women should compete for men, not against them. And yet, this "Democratic" party is basing all its assumptions on the belief that it's not up to Obama to apologize (Obama hasn't done annnnnything to require an apology!), but rather it is up to Clinton to bring her voters to where the party wants them. This makes no sense whatsoever unless one realizes that most of the party is still stuck in the belief that women can only compete if they are given permission and support to do so. They fail to see the inappropriateness of expecting Hillary to submit to Obama in a contest over who will be the nominee (that is, a contest to decide which one should be the one to submit). They seem to see only that Hillary Clinton continued to compete after this permission was withdrawn - therefore, all the damage done is her fault. She in her arrogance refused to get out of the race when she was told to do so. She continued to act as if the will of the voters had something to do with how we define what is good for the party.

Of course, if she'd just quit earlier, Wright and Pfleger's crude and insulting comments about white women wouldn't be an issue. Randi Rhodes wouldn't have had to call all those Democrats "white trash". Every nasty thing anyone has done becomes Clinton's fault, if you accept that Clinton had a duty to compete for Obama rather than against him.

So she now owes it to the party to deliver the votes.

In the days to come, just as in the days that have passed, I'll talk much more about Obama's policies. About his health care policy, and his foreign policy, and his social policy, and his economic policy. But so much as I like to speak of white papers and scored proposals, politics is not generally experienced in terms of policies. It's more often experienced in terms of self-interest, and broken promises, and base fears, and half-truths. But, very rarely, it's experienced as a call to create something better, bigger, grander, and more just than the world we have. When that happens, as it did with Robert F. Kennedy, the inspired remember those moments for the rest of their lives.
- Ezra Klein (January)**

But Hillary can't deliver the votes, because it is the expectation itself that pisses a lot of people off. It's shocking that this guy is really so crude about not treating her the way a rival deserves to be treated. The only people who could possibly continue to believe that the angry women of the Democratic party will "come around" are people who accept that female Democratic voters have a special duty. That it's ok to put expectations on these women: the good of the party must be put first. Issues and being listened to will happen when the party gives its permission, but right now, that permission - the permission to speak with the expectation of being heard - is withdrawn until you get back in place.

I also think Obama's refusal to treat Clinton with respect and legitimacy has a lot to do with his disconnect with lower income males, as well. For one thing, it triggers a massive snob alert***: to see an elite being so condescending and obnoxious to a presumed "inferior" sends the red flags up.

But also, though people probably don't really think about it much, there's probably a different view from the other side of the so-called glass ceiling. For those rich and powerful enough to live in a world where women still don't have access to power, the view of women is different. Their relationship with women is different. Lower-income men are more likely to have grown up a little since the first females graduated from the local tech school. They live in a world where you don't talk to people that way. They have probably already suffered through having a female boss and they have survived the experience.

And the idea that they identify with "the boys" is not the only possibility for these men. They can also identify as the protector of the girl being attacked by the bully. If they see Hillary as one of their own, all the harassment piled onto Hillary backfires - it becomes a sort of class warfare ("you think just because you're rich you can mess with our women?").

And if you are someone who has already adjusted to the reality of competing against women, the dogpile on Clinton does not look impressive. It looks weak. It looks crude. It looks adolescent. It looks like he is the sort of guy who might pinch the Queen of England's butt. (Then, after she fails to be flattered by the compliment, we'll all have to listen to him whine about how Britain is full of bitter, xenophobic people.)

It seems pretty clear that if we were all equally bound to put the good of the party first and foremost, Obama would not be our nominee. But the party is determined to have him, and wants Hillary to make it all good. But she can't - and if she is foolish enough to try, she will squander much of the respect she has earned. It's my vote. That is the whole basis of democracy - you know, that word from which the Democratic party got its name? It's based on listening to the will of the people.

It's so absurd, it would read as satire except somehow it's really true: the party elites think it's up to them to decide the will of the people and it's then up to the people to confirm their choice. There is no recognition of the voter as someone who has input into the process except insofar as voters have an obligation to deliver, in a weird sort of reversal of who owes what to whom. The elite expect to rule the way they'd like, but at the same time they want all the legitimacy of a "democratic" process.

If the question of delegates seems increasingly settled, however, the problem of party unity is still far from solved. Chris Hayes, Dana Goldstein, and Eve Fairbanks all filed reports from the chaos outside the Committee Meeting, and what they found was an authentic, deep anger among Clinton supporters. And that's not a problem the Rules Committee can resolve. This one is up to Clinton herself.
-Ezra Klein (June)

That isn't the first reason why Obama became objectionable to me. It isn't the only reason why there is no way - absolutely no way - Hillary Clinton can "deliver" my vote if he is the nominee. But even without looking at all the other problems this man brings, this reason alone is a good reason why no democracy-loving person should vote for him - or for that matter any Democrat who isn't actively opposing him. A vote to confirm this attitude, this belief system - it is like a vote confirming and legitimizing the very idea that voters should and do and must and can vote the way they are told to vote.

Which is not something I will vote for under any circumstances.

They [working class white voters] may lack a formal higher education, but they're not stupid. What they're waiting for is assurance that an Obama administration won't leave them behind.

Hope, change, and inspiration don't do it.
- Geraldine Ferraro

__________________________________
* A quick comparison between the expectations of what women will do if they do not get their way, vs. stated expectations of what AAs will supposedly do if they do not get their way, shows a real discrepancy. I am hesitant to speak of this because it is sexist, but IMO it is also racist. Of course Donna Brazile would not agree, though I have already earned hate-points for daring to challenge her on what is and isn't racist. I am one of those who believes that Bill Cosby and Juan Williams have been truer friends to the black community than Donna "spend their political capital on a new wardrobe for me" Brazile.

Personally, I think that saying that AAs will riot in the streets if they don't get their way sounds derogatory. It sounds like they're suggesting AAs are infantile or runaway id or something. It also sounds like someone is trying to start a race war - and I don't like either side, black or white, trying to pull that crap.

To me, I hear rich people inciting one group of poor people to attack another group of poor people, with the net result being all the anger that could and should be used for constructive social change being "steam vented" in ways that are destructive to poor neighborhoods (of any color) and keep rich people (of any color) safe from poor people (of any color). Black people speak of "appeasers" as being the blacks who conform to "white America", but I think eventually we'll come to realize they aren't the "sellouts" - it's the ones who redirect black rage toward whites, and away from "middleclassness", who have chosen class over race. They buy 10,000sf homes with the money they get from leading angry, militant-sounding protests that never seem to change anything. They keep all the rage focused on the past, and none of that rage ever is allowed to work toward the future. (This may be the real reason why Rev. Wright and Pfleger and others who make their living off of the dual message "you are persecuted/don't join white America" are behaving rather badly toward Obama right now? What is really going on with Obama quitting the church? I would love to be a fly on that wall!)

** As impossible (disobedient) as it may seem, Hillary's supporters experience her as the inspiring, Robert F. Kennedy-like figure.

*** Sadly or comically (depending on one's viewpoint), it appears that the elites do not even recognize the most offensive attacks as being attacks. This seems to come of their tendency to assume the working class agrees with their assessment of themselves as morally, intellectually, and culturally superior.

(Either that, or they're party traitors and secretly working for the Republicans.)