Will Hillary be 2008's Ralph Nader?

As I've read the coverage of the pro-Clinton protests at the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee meeting, I can't help but be struck by the similarities between these folks and Nader's supporters in 2000. Nader's supporters were faced with an election that they could not possibly win, along with the distinct possibility that their efforts, if they persisted, could result in the election of George W. Bush, a candidate who was, without a doubt, far more antithetical to their beliefs and goals than Al Gore. However, they ignored this rational conclusion and persisted in their campaign, perhaps out of pure egoism. They almost certainly contributed to Gore's defeat and the disaster of the Bush presidency. And, even today, Nader continues to enter himself into presidential races, concerned primarily with his own self-importance, and ignoring the practical consequences to our nation. He has remained willfully blind of his role in a shameful period of our nation's political life.

This write-up does much to solidify my sense that the hard-core Clinton supporters are, at this point, an anti-pragmatic fringe who must resort to the most irrational and ad hominem of arguments to prop up their now-flimsy position. The rules governing the 2008 primaries were clear to everyone at the outset of the campaign season, and the Rules and Bylaws Committee has now, through a democratic process, altered those rules to give Florida and Michigan a voice that they were initially denied. The writing is on the wall that Obama will be the nominee and that those who support the principals embodied by the Democratic party must now set aside their differences and support our candidate. Yet, with disregard for the damage they might do, this die-hard fringe is pulling out all the stops in their diatribe against Obama, embracing even the looniest of positions, such as the accusation by a random guy with a Youtube account that he and Obama did crack and had sex in a limousine. Seriously: see it here.

And Hillary doesn't do anything to stop it. In fact, she encouraged these folks to protest the meeting. Immistakably, blood will be on her hands for any damage these folks do to the Democrat's prospects for the presidency. It is a sad trend in the history of social movements that the movement's destruction often comes from within. Jealousies and animosities arise among those who would lead, and what could have been an effective and united front for social change becomes a fractured, self-defeated farce. We can only hope that, in the week ahead, Clinton will concede the nomination to Obama and begin to do the hard work necessary to undo any damage she has caused to the party. If she does this, she will do much to bolster our chances to take back the White House in 2008. More than that, she will save herself politically and avoid becoming the pariah that Nader has become. 

Also:

I enjoyed this great speech by Donna Brazile, in which she appeals to basic principles of fairness and predictability in defending the decision not to fully count the Florida and Michigan delegates.