Hillary Clinton has threatened nuclear options twice in the past week. First she has promised unilateral annihilation of Iran if they develop the Bomb and use it anywhere. This is one step beyond the MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) world of Dr. Strangelove and a radical departure from one of the most sacrosanct of US policies.
But George Bush has already done a damn good job of lowering the bar for sacrosanct US policies -- remember how "quaint" it used to be to not torture people? -- and has also redefined down what "self-defense" means. As in so many other things, Clinton is just following Bush's lead and even extending it a little. Her answer to McCain's 100 years in Iraq is to just bomb all that sand into radioactive glass, then NO ONE will be there for 100 years, or more.
Mission Demolished.
Now, as was broken here on the Huffington Post, Clinton is threatening to nuke the Democratic Party, nay, democracy itself, out of self-defense for her candidacy. She failed at conventional warfare, as she seriously underestimated Obama's capacity to put boots on the ground. She has failed in her use of other Weapons of Mass Distraction, as her poisonous rhetoric and mustard-gas ads have failed to blind more than a few of the electorate.
So now she's going drop the Big One, and use her clout on the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee to try to blast both delegations into the mix as they currently stand. Given the 50%-33% lead she enjoys in Florida and the 55%-0% lead in Michigan, where Obama was NOT on the ballot, this would reverse the whole course and tenor of the campaign, perhaps even giving her the lead.
And in doing so, she would utterly annihilate the already tenuous unity in the Democratic Party, and leave her own campaign radioactive.
In fact, she's not even waiting for the party to make the decision. She herself, in her Bush-like persona, is the Decider of what the race really is. Her website has already changed the nomination threshold to 2208, as if Michigan and Florida were already in the mix. As if the rules, and the Rules and Bylaws Committee, and her prior word, are all quaintly irrelevant.
It bears repeating here that Hillary herself agreed to those rules ahead of time: Florida and Michigan would be stripped of their delegates, and no one would campaign in either state. Like all the major candidates, Barack Obama withdrew his name from the Michigan primary, but Hillary cheated, and left hers on the ballot with boutique candidates Kucinich and Dodd, and the clueless Mike Gravel.
Yes, Hillary was cynically hedging her bets, and the people of Michigan who did end up going to the polls way back on January 15th saw through her. Fully 40% of the electorate there voted for none of the above. Added to the pitiful Dodd, Kucininch and Gravel combined numbers, and that means a grand total of 45% - - over a quarter of a million Democrats - - voted against her. And that pretty accurately reflects what her polling negatives have been throughout the campaign.
Two weeks later with the disastrous South Carolina primary in her rearview, Clinton prevailed in Florida after openly pandering to them from afar, while every other candidate - - you know, the ones with HONOR - - kept silent. Even so, she only garnered 50% of the vote. Nearly three-quarters of a million people voted another way.
Let's stand back and take a look at those numbers, as they are HUGE-acious. In Michigan and Florida, over one MILLION people voted ABC - Anybody But Clinton. To seat the delegates in the way that the Clinton camp is threatening disfranchises that million people in what the Clintonistas insist are key swing states.
As Hillary once famously almost wrote "It Takes a Village," (someone else wrote it, but she signed it.) But in trying to save this Democratic Village all for herself, she must destroy it. She'll take Obama, herself and the Village out just for spite: Mutually Assured Destruction-type MAD. And she has shown that she won't stop there. In order to save the Middle East, she would nuke it: just plain nutsy-type MAD.
Hillary Clinton with nuclear options is more likely to end up with the China Syndrome than Homer Simpson with 'roid rage (a.k.a. our current President). She must be stopped.
Now is the time for Howard Dean to come to the aid of his Party. He, the party leaders, and the undeclared superdelegates have got to step up NOW, tell Hillary it's over and stop the MADness. Otherwise the Democratic Party will end up a smoldering heap of radioactive slag.
Did someone forget to tell her that if Iran attacked Israel, that Israel already has nuclear weapons and could take care of themselves?
What she'd do, though, is destroy the party. Dead right on that. Evidently, that's her plan. Why? I dunno. I just dunno.
But even more, by seating the delegates for those states, previously agreed not to count, the party would be dishonoring--and disregarding the will of--all the people who didn't vote, because their votes wouldn't count, or didn't take the vote seriously for the same reason, or voted Republican or Independent instead.
If we bowed to Hillary's tactics, we would disenfranchise far more than we set right, and reward her for breaking her word in multiple ways and breaking the law in others.
American politics, for the past few decades has been an Us vs Them mentality (or Us vs Everyone Else). Obama is going against the ENTIRE status quo. He is the leader America needs at this crucial time. To bring us out of this aristocratic trance he needs our support. He's the only candidate who knows what its like to actually work like the rest of us. I just hope racists and knuckle-draggers that can't use the internet don't F-up this country worse by putting Bush-lite, or Supersize-Bush, in power. If Obama wins, this won't be a historic moment because he's black, but a historic moment because he's not part of the super-privileged American elites who're groomed for power since nappies. God Help Us All if Obama doesn't win.
That is, if Hillary doesn't blow us all up first.
This woman will stop at nothing - nothing - to persue her relentless, futile pursuit of the nomination (she will never win the Presidency!) and couldn't care less of the consequences for the Democratic party or her country.
Like her husband, an inveterate LIAR, Hillary manifests the very worst in U.S. politics and uses any method to achieve what in her warped mind is her right, the White House.
When will this sad, pathetic woman go away? Only when the American electorate sends her into the political wildnerness.