So, if you’re of the mind that GitM has degraded in quality and become obsessively single-minded since the election season began in earnest, and that I should really just head out to the movies and chill, I apologize. There’s a link about the The Dark Knight just above, and I’ll try to keep the coverage somewhat broader in the weeks ahead. Alas, although the electoral math would seem to make it clear that the race is over — former Clinton flunky Dick Morris is the latest to call it — it would also seem the Clinton campaign is not getting the message, and they’re more than willing to commit the party version of fratricide out of pique. Case in point, this new interview with Newsweek, in which Hillary Clinton actually floats (again) the nuclear option: stealing Obama’s pledged delegates. (“Even elected and caucus delegates are not required to stay with whomever they are pledged to.“) Uh, what? (And caucus delegates are elected delegates, but nice try.)
So, I’ll be the first to admit that the election season has become more than a little tiring and draining at this point, and the idea of at least seven more weeks of this until Pennsylvania does not bring a smile to my face. But, it’s apparently time to take Fight Club up a notch. When Hillary Clinton and her campaign lie incessantly about her experience, cozy up with hatemongers for cash, try to change the election rules in mid-stream, spew forth readily disprovable idiocies in what seems at this point to be an attempt to hide some ill-gotten gains, and begin pushing John McCain over the presumptive Democratic nominee, she’s going to get called on it. When a guy like Joe Conason, who made a career out of arguing (correctly) that there was really nothing much to Whitewater, then turns around and tries to use the exact same pattern of half-assed insinuation to smear Obama with Tony Rezko (a media tic his Salon colleague Glenn Greenwald had savagely picked apart just two days before), he’s going to get called on it.
And this talk — by the candidate herself! — of stealing pledged delegates is the last straw. In short, these people need to go. Since the Clintons are not going gracefully, since they seem hell-bent on refusing to respect the rules in this contest, and since, in the naked pursuit of power, they have effectively decided to obliterate their legacy in the Democratic Party and salt the earth around its smoldering remains, there’s nothing else to be done. It’s time to cry havoc, and let slip the blogs of war.