Rachel Maddow Destroys the 2008 Narrative

Bernie says he’s going to contest the convention.

I like Bernie. But I think he is beginning to listen too much to the same damn people we had to put up with in 2008. This is what they think:

Hillary is evil. She has The Ring. Her voters are unimportant. She must step aside. 

I would go even further and speculate that many of Bernie’s middle aged male Democratic supporters are suffering from what I call The More Deserving Man Syndrome. That is, no matter what over accomplished woman is competing for what has been an exclusively male position before, there will always be that one more deserving man out there that only other men can see. But I digress.

Getting back to the title.

Rachel Maddow destroyed Bernie’s argument (post from BlueNationReview) for why there should be a contested convention by taking away one of the pillars of the “Obama ran a great campaign!” argument. She pointed out just how close the convention was in 2008. Actually, I think her estimate of a 4% pledged delegate difference is too high. It depends on how she is counting the Florida and Michigan delegations. If she is counting them as only half strength and Obama getting all of Michigan’s uncommitted delegates from a primary in which he wasn’t even on the ballot, then it was much, much closer than 4%. It was statistically insignificant.

Nevertheless, almost all of the superdelegates switched from Hillary to Obama. I say there was money involved, filtered to down ticket races from Obama’s Wall Street donors. But whatever.

Here’s the bottom line: Obama “won” the nomination from:

1.) Winning mostly caucus states. He lost most of the big Democratic prizes like CA, PA, NY, NJ, MA, FL, OH, TX, MI, NJ, just go look at the primary map

2.) Gifts of uncommitted delegates in MI plus a halving of FL and MI delegates by the fiat of the Rules Committee in May 2008.

3.) Superdelegates

That’s it. There was nothing magical about Obama’s campaign. He wasn’t that successful. If it weren’t for the media helping him but constructing a false narrative about *his* inevitability, he could have been subjected to a legitimate floor flight from a opponent who had far more reason to contest his appointment. In short, he would be where Bernie is now.

Do you hear what I’m saying Emily Bazelon, David Plotz and John Dickerson??  Obama did not win in a landslide. It wasn’t even close to a landslide. He won because you guys helped him and gave his crazy ass supporters a lot more legitimacy than they deserved. Now, it is coming back again full circle because those same crazy ass guys think they can do it again.

And the reason we know just how ridiculously close the 2008 delegate count was is because Hillary was pressured to concede the nomination before the first ballot roll call ended and before California had to commit its delegates, by law, to Clinton. Pelosi et al wanted to hurry the whole thing along and flip the states without the legal requirement of a first ballot commitment before anyone caught on.

I can never listen to Love Train again without wanting to throw up.

You would think that the first female candidate to get that close to winning the nomination would be accorded the honor of a full first ballot roll call vote. How does that make you feel, Rachel Maddow? Her pledged delegates were bullied and harassed in some cases, and many states didn’t get an opportunity to vote for her during the first ballot. We’re not talking about the second ballot where they could switch. We’re saying that some states were forced to switch during the first ballot. And the vast majority of the media was totally onboard with robbing the first female candidate of a first round roll call vote that she was going to lose anyway by less than 100 votes if we count all the delegate reassignment.

The first female candidate with legitimate claim to the nomination was ordered by her party to step aside.

Does that sound cool to you now eight years later? Because it wasn’t to us.

But if the party had gone ahead with a regular roll call vote, just like every male candidate would have demanded, the vote would have looked way too close and might have roused the attention and enthusiasm of the voters who were not enamored with Obama and thought he didn’t have the experience to take on what the Bushies and the financial industry were going to leave him. And they would have been right.

But Hillary graciously stepped aside. Just like Al Gore graciously stepped aside. Just like John Kerry graciously stepped aside.

Three points. Hmmmm, there’s a trend there…  It’s almost as if someone wants a relatively weak and easy to control Democrat in the White House or a right wing Republican…

But Bernie wants to contest the convention. His supporters would like for Hillary to graciously step aside — again.

Really?  I’m talking to all you issues oriented Bernie supporters out there. Do you really want Bernie to push aside this female candidate who is winning in a legitimate, clean primary season without any hinky rules crap? Is this really what you want?

She’s winning fair and square. It’s not up to you to substitute your judgment for the judgment of other voters no matter how stupid, mislead or uninformed you may think they are. If you were able to tolerate the least prepared Democratic president, you can tolerate the most prepared. Yes, there will be people who will make her look like Satan incarnate. It’s going to be hard for her. But if she couldn’t challenge in a year when she had every right to do it, then Bernie should accept the will of the voters after everyone has had a vote, and concede graciously.

Nobody gets exactly what they want in an election year. There is no perfect candidate who will say all the right things and is certified and guaranteed to do exactly what you want once they get into office. Do you want that anyway? What if something really important comes up and that president has to do something they thought they’d never do? All you can do is look at their records, look at their accomplishments, see if they are learning as the campaign proceeds and vote accordingly.

That’s what Clinton’s voters have done and they will not step aside this year.