June 7
2016, 12:41 p.m.
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 haveelected 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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