This is not Nam

I’ve been negotiating with myself for 6 weeks or so about whether or not it’s cool to write this post, and I had pretty much decided that it wasn’t – despite the persistent seductiveness of a comparative Clinton-Mugabe riff, I’m no hatchet man. Zimbabwe roils with political violence, intimidation, and political and military capture of the electoral process that we could never see in our country as currently constituted.

Hillary Clinton, however, has stepped on my last nerve. Really. Only in her world, in which she is badly in need of some sleep, or a vacation, or something to get her head put back on her shoulders, could failing to count the votes from an election for which the rules said that the votes would not be counted be analogous to what Robert Mugabe is in the process of doing again in Zimbabawe.

Let’s be crystal clear here, because the Rules and Bylaws Committee of the DNC is meeting today to decide what to do with the Michigan and Florida delegates, and while they may settle on some pragmatic outcome that moves the party towards a healing conclusion to this bewildering odyssey, any outcome other than exactly that one which was promised by the rules under which the election was held is a travesty.

I’m a sucker for elections being done properly, so let’s review the theory. Here’s how an election works:
• Step One: Everyone agrees on a process for picking a winner. This is a very important first step – it’s the reason that, in the end, though some people have to be governed by someone other than the person by whom they wanted to be governed, pretty much everyone agrees to be governed by that person.
• Step Two: Votes are cast and counted in accordance with the system that everyone agreed to in Step One.
• Step Three: The outcome is declared according to the rules laid out in Step One, and followed in Step Two.

Common trouble spots include:
• The rules agreed to in Step One are not followed in Step Two. This is very common, nearly universal to some extent. The US-led global melt down of this decade, for example, can be traced back to this type of hiccup.
• The rules agreed to in Step One are followed in Step Two, but the loser declared by Step Three complains that they were not, or in some cases, obscures what happened in Step Two. This is less common, but really bad. This is Zimbabwe.
• The rules agreed to in Step One are followed in Step Two, but the loser declared by Step Three complains that there was something wrong with Step One. This is also very rare, but a favorite of players in a democracy that is strong enough to prevent retroactive messing with Step Two. This is what is happening in Washington DC today.

Seriously, though, this is not a laughing matter, and I want to assert that my position has little or nothing to do with my Obama supportiveness. Well, that’s not exactly true. This is why I’m an Obama supporter. I don’t think my candidate would do what she’s doing. I settled on Barack when, last summer, she criticized him for saying he’d be open to meeting with Ahmadinejad, and he stuck to his guns. My respect for her was vast, but then she did that, she said she would not have stayed at Trinity United Church, she did the gas tax thing, she did the “hard-working Americans, white Americans” thing, and she did the RFK thing. And she is persistently willing to stake the case for her nomination on an election in which her opponent was not on the ballot, which was in accordance with the rules governing that contest. Here, I’m gonna say it: Hillary, if anyone is reading the Mugabe playbook, it’s you.

Bill says her best path to the presidency might now be the vice-presidency. I’d prefer a running mate who is focused on winning right now. I don’t trust her. I don’t want her anywhere near the ticket.