Hillary Beat Bernie I Guess. So Let's Get Along.

Welp, this will have a few Bernie supporters claiming the media's in the bag for Hillary.

BREAKING: @AP finds Clinton reached the number of delegates needed to clinch the Democratic nomination for president pic.twitter.com/e473F0G4vX

— The Associated Press (@AP) June 7, 2016

I know it's math and Hillary will get the pledged delegates she needs to win tomorrow regardless of who wins the state, but the AP announcing Hillary's win the day before the California primaries has gotta seem like an insult... sorry, conspiracy... to Bernie supporters.

To Hillary's credit, her first statement was one of humility and reserve:

We’re flattered, @AP, but we've got primaries to win. CA, MT, NM, ND, NJ, SD, vote tomorrow! https://t.co/8t3GpZqc1U

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) June 7, 2016

To Hillary's detriment, a fundraising email sent out by her staff contains images labeled with the words, "Secret Win."

The images in this Clinton email are labeled "secret win." pic.twitter.com/YR4uCdQTZv

— Christina Bellantoni (@cbellantoni) June 7, 2016

That'll get some conspiracy theories smokin'.

Of course, the AP article isn't exactly something that helps Hillary. In fact, it very well could play into Bernie's hands-- Hillary supporters, thinking she's a sure thing, might do their hair or learn to play glockenspiel instead of voting in tomorrow's as-it-turns-out-not-really-crucial Primary elections. Bernie could, as a result, gain ground on Hillary or perhaps eke out a slightly larger margin of victory.

None of that will change the fact that Hillary will receive the pledged delegates she needs tomorrow (added to the superdelegates the AP says have committed to her) to reach the magic Primary-clinching number of 2,383 delegates. Bernie's campaign rightly points out that superdelegates can change their minds before the convention, and that 400 made up their mind before the Primary campaign even began. But that ignores the fact that those 400 who went all-in for Hillary at the very beginning are most likely among her biggest supporters, who will never change their minds. And unless you flip the vast majority of superdelegates (not just some), Bernie's still going to be behind.

So Bernie supporters, I feel you. I know this seems unfair as shit and rigged as hell. But if that's your reaction to today's headlines, it's good preparation for when the official nomination is declared, possibly Tuesday night, Wednesday morning, or on convention day. And that means it's a good time right now for all of us to consider what we do next. 

Hilldawgs gotta open their hearts and minds to the powerful needs and desires of a young, frustrated, progressive movement that deserves to be taken seriously. And Berniebroskies gotta reckon that Hillary is far more likely to represent their interests than a megalomaniac manchild who, at best, will nominate a wildly conservative supreme court justice who strips away our civil liberties, or at worst, will seriously endanger this country's safety.

Otherwise, no one is gonna be liking any of the headlines that come next...

Divided, we lose.

3 Reasons Bernie Bros Are Mad, And Why They Shouldn't Be

The system is rigged. If you're a Bernie Sanders supporter, you already know that. How could one of the most liberal states vote for Hillary Clinton, that Republican in Democrat's clothing? Voters were disenfranchised! Independents couldn't vote! 126,000 Democratic voters were wiped from the rolls just before the primary! The will of the people was subverted! The fix was in!

I hate to interrupt this stream of outrage. But lets get real. This has nothing to do with the system. It has to do with people who rarely vote suddenly being surprised that they don't understand how primaries work.

1. Superdelegates are anti-democratic!

They're not meant to be democratic. They're meant to prevent terrible mistakes like Donald Trump from taking over the party and changing its core principles. If the Republicans had superdelegates, Trump wouldn't be an issue. Superdelegates are not hand-picked friends of Hillary Clinton. They're committed Democratic party loyalists--Democratic congressmen, senators, state officials, you know, people that Democrats have voted into office time and time again. These guys and gals have been in the political trenches for a long time, fighting for Democratic values against the Republicans. They're responsible for the Democratic party's platform for women's rights, the rights of minorities, the support of labor and education. They're here to make sure the party sticks to Democratic principles. They have an interest in making sure the Democratic candidate can win the general election and represent Democratic party values.

Superdelegates are not robots. If Bernie won the popular vote, and the most pledged delegates, it would be abundantly clear that the party base had shifted and the Democratic party would be wise to follow the will of its members. THIS ACTUALLY HAPPENED in 2008, when superdelegates recognized that Barak Obama, not Hillary Clinton, had the support of the Democratic majority. They shifted their alliances, and Hillary herself, for the good of the party, released those delegates sworn to her of their obligations.

Bernie does not lead in the popular vote. He does not lead in pledged delegates. In fact, there's no chance he will change this by the time of the convention. Before, when he had a chance, he argued that the superdelegates should follow the will of the people. Now, he says they should go against it.

2. The primaries should be open!

Primaries should not be open. That allows raiding from the opposing political party. Republicans seeking to go against a softer opponent could pack the Democratic Party ballot boxes. More importantly, why should we allow those not invested enough in a political party to have a say in that party's candidate? Primaries are designed to help a political party choose its candidate. Only those committed to the party should make that choice. If you want a different candidate, make your own party. Pick your candidate from a spinning wheel or by throwing darts. You can do that. But if you want a say in who the Republicans or Democrats choose, you should be a Republican or a Democrat. Otherwise organize, raise money, support a real third party run. If you're not a Democrat, then why should you get to choose who the Democrats nominate? It would be like UNC choosing which players Villanova gets to start in the NCAA championship game.

Elections decide who leads the country. We're all part of the country, so we all get to decide who leads it. Primaries, on the other hand, decide who leads the party. If you're not part of the party, then why should you get to choose the leader? If you don't like either candidate the two major parties have chosen, you have three choices. Don't vote, support a third party candidate, or pick a side and seek to influence its policies through your primary votes and level of involvement. Don't complain because you've registered as an independent and therefore can't vote in the Democratic primary. That was your choice!

3. Hillary's goons purged Bernie voters from the voting rolls! They switched votes!

Voter fraud is not a problem. It simply isn't. Many have made a big deal out of the 126,000 Democratic voters purged from the voting rolls prior to the election. As if somehow, all these were determined to be Bernie voters last fall.

The truth? It's a mix of bureaucracy and confused people. According to Board of Elections executive director Michael Ryan, 12,000 had moved out of borough, and 44,000 had been placed in an inactive file after mailings to their homes bounced back. An additional 70,000 were already inactive and hadn't voted in two successive federal elections or responded to cancellation notices. It wasn't all this year that suddenly 126,000 became ineligible to vote--this number has added up in the 4 years since 2012, the last time Brooklyn cleared their system of ineligible voters. In a place where people move in and out as often as Brooklyn, this number isn't out of the ordinary.

Were you ineligible? It was likely your fault. Take Jessica Sager. She wrote for the New York Post that she was purged from the voting rolls and became a ghost. But it's very clear from her own words why this happened. Jessica, who was registered as an Independent in New Jersey, just moved to the city in July of last year. It's not clear when, or if, she changed her address officially and obtained a NYC driver's license or proof of residency, but by her own admission, she missed the deadline for a registered voter to switch parties. March 25th was for new voters, not previously registered ones. That would be in October. From Bernie's own website:

What is this Oct 9 deadline I keep hearing about?Oct 9 2015 was the last day for switching party affiliation in time to vote in the Primary Elections in New York in April 2016. This deadline only applied to existing voters who wanted to change party in time to vote in that party’s primary (eg independents switching to Democrat to vote for Bernie in the Democratic primary!). It DOES NOT apply to new voters.

Jessica was not a new voter. She was registered in New Jersey. She voted before, as she says, in the 2008 and 2012 elections. So the March deadline to switch parties didn't apply to her. The October one did. Her printed and mailed registration form came several months too late to participate as a Democrat in this primary election.

I don't fault Jessica for being confused. The system is far from being perfectly clear. But she's being disingenuous to imply that this had nothing to do with her own ignorance of the process. If you change addresses and switch districts, its your responsibility to make sure you update your registration.

FULL DISCLOSURE: I voted for Obama in 2008 in New Jersey, despite spending more of my time in New York. I hadn't yet changed my address officially--I still had a New Jersey license and listed my parents' address as my permanent address. Imagine if I had shown up in New York to vote, expecting no problems. Instead, I recognized that I'd been lazy about changing my address. My parents were able to forward me the mailer that told me where my designated polling place was. Even though it was more than an hour away, it was important for me to vote, so I took the train and did it at the polling place assigned to me.

I've seen Bernie supporters irate that they can't tell whether their vote was accurately counted. They just can't believe their neighborhood would vote for Hillary. This is another example of ignorance. There is no way to verify a vote was recorded correctly. Only that you voted. This is by design. A secret ballot is meant to stay secret to avoid vote selling. If you could verify that your vote was for a certain candidate, then that would promote vote selling or coercive behavior. As long as the vote is secret and there's no way to tell, no one can force you to vote for a candidate. This is a bedrock principle of our voting system. It seems odd that some Bernie supporters aren't aware of it.

I understand all the frustration from people who feel like they've been excluded from the process. But many of them don't understand that in order to really change things, you need to be involved in that process more than just showing up for a primary vote or on election day. "Independent" is not a party. It has no platform. It has no plan. You could be a skinhead racist and be a registered "Independent." You could be a communist who believes in a fully socialized state, and be a registered "independent."

If you're unhappy with the two parties and what they represent, you have two main options. Organize with others to create a third party. This is not unprecedented in American history. Some have done quite well. If your party grows enough and makes enough noise, and falls to one side of the ideological line, then the competing party with the most to lose will be forced to cave and accept your agenda into its platform. If your party falls in the middle and makes enough of a splash, then both parties will be forced to moderate their platforms to fall closer to the center. If you manage to really capture the populace, you might even drain enough support from the closest competitor that they're forced to fold completely. Unlikely, but it has happened in the past.

Then there's option two-- changing the party from the inside. In order to do this, you can't be an Independent. You need to choose the side you're trying to change, and become a member. Then you have voting power within the party. We all saw how Tea Partiers were able to rip the Republican party sharply to the right, even getting them to give up on immigration reform. They created a powerful voting bloc within the party that threatened to become a third party-- the only way for the Republicans to win was to accommodate them. If Bernie's supporters want to change the Democratic party... they need to be involved members of the Democratic party. Indeed, Bernie supporters within the party have already forced Hillary to move her views further to the left.

You can still be "independent" and be a member of a party. Plenty of Republicans and Democrats have crossed party lines to vote in elections. But if you register that way, you need to be aware that you've chosen not to join a club. You don't get to say what the club does. And you can't say the system is rigged if you've never taken the time to understand it in the first place.

Say It Ain't So Hillary

Hillary Clinton makes it awfully hard to support her campaign when she makes statements like this:



Now, in her defense, she's merely quoting what an AP report found. But why couldn't she just have said, "The AP says that I'm more popular with working class Americans." Why'd she have to say "white Americans"? Why'd she have to go into demographic detail at all?

By making the argument that she's more popular with white people (uneducated white people, for that matter), Hillary basically goes against dozens of years of Democratic Party logic, which strives to encompass minority groups in securing a victory against the largely racist, xenophobic and homophobic Republican party. Now she's saying... "Screw Obama's support from minorities-- I've got the whites! And we all know they're the real ones that matter."

That may not have been the message Hillary was aiming to send. But that's what people heard. And as a white man, I'm disgusted. I don't think any leader of any political party should think in terms of racial lines. And I certainly don't think any candidate should tout their overwhelming support from uneducated white people. A President of this nation should represent all people equally, no matter their skin color. Instead of proudly proclaiming how popular she was with the redneck set, Hillary should have simply stuck to touting her popularity in large states, and battleground states like Michigan, Florida and Pennsylvania, which could be key to this year's elections. That's her strongest argument, I believe.

Just listen to how she stumbles over the word "white," twice. She's clearly not comfortable even saying it. I chalk this up to a horrible advisor, giving her some really bad direction. That troubles me, because Hillary is smart enough to not go for that.

I've been pro-Hillary, but as the media makes out her campaign to be more and more desperate (even though the delegate split is tiny), she seems to be coming a bit unravelled. And it's unfortunate, because we shouldn't choose our Presidential candidate based on the campaign missteps or flubbed lines. It should be about who has the best ideas, and the best track record of implementing, or attempting to implement those ideas. Obama has yet to thrill me with any ideas of substance. And name me one thing he's actually done during his time in the senate, other than campaigning for President?

But at least he hasn't offended me, like Hillary has now.

Another big argument going for her was that she's been in the White House before. And not just as some Laura Bush-style walking-talking-photo-op. She has experience "under fire." Not sniper fire, as she erroneously claimed, but fire from Republicans. She's withstood it well. The Whitewater scandal washed out. Her health care plan was destroyed, but she remained dedicated to finding a solution. She's actually attempted to do things, even when a Republican legislature made those things impossible.

Obama? Well, he likes the word "change" as much as Bush likes the words "hard work." I'm not a fan of words. I'm a fan of actions.

But, as I said, Hillary keeps making it harder to defend her. By scrapping for every vote, she's compromised some of her ideals, making more and more statements that appeal to the segment of the populace that hasn't already decided for Obama. And this just makes her even less attractive to the typical Obama voter, who still actually believes there are politicians that can turn America into a Utopian candyland, full of bunnies and sunshine. Obama, luckily for him, has not had to make such concessions.

Yet.

When the election versus McCain comes, and he finds himself trailing in the polls, desperate for some of that Hillary-segment of the Democratic party, he will undoubtedly have to make some of the same, pandering statements as she did.

When you're in front, you can be everyone's messiah. But I fear, when the general election comes, Obama's youthful idealism will not be enough to take the election from the battle-tested McCain and the Republican fear-mongering machine.

I believe Hillary can. She has before.

And I, for one, cannot withstand another 4-8 years of Republican rule.

And We're Back

Sorry for the lack of recent posts. It's been a busy time in Adam's Life. Between my coverage of the Tribeca Film Festival for work, a new article for MSN.com, and the recent, mind-blowing news that I've been chosen as Best Man for my best friend's wedding, I've been slacking on my blogging duties. To you, loyal and frustrated reader, I apologize.

So let's get to it.

I'm still in the Hillary corner personally, but don't you suspect she's disgusted with herself at how ugly she let this campaign become?

Once the shining star of a powerful, respected Democratic party, she now finds herself fighting for position in a spring break KY-wrestling match. Obama vs. Hillary!! Drink specials all night!!

The saddest thing is, at no other time in American history has the media focused so heavily on one political party for so long in the months leading up to an election. It's almost as if Republicans don't exist, other than a few lost souls wandering the halls of the White House. And instead of using that media attention to promote their platform, the democrats instead are shining a spotlight on internal divisions, campaign mismanagement, and extreme wackos like Reverend Wright.

If only Hillary and Obama had led civil campaigns, we'd be hearing about how the Republicans bungled the war, and continue to bungle the war. We'd be hearing about how 8 years of Republican leadership has left our economy on the brink of ruin. We'd be hearing about how Senator McCain sold his soul to the radical right, and plans to continue the misguided policies of Bush II. But instead, we hear about a screaming black preacher, imaginary snipers, racist blue collar workers. It's a damn shame.

McCain loves America-bashing preachers as well, Frank Rich of the New York Times points out. But McCain is not under the microscope. Not yet. The Democratic party is, and will continue to be for as long as this drama continues. And if the slides being magnified are dirty with the muck and mire of two squabbling contenders, you can bet the American voting public will see it. Wouldn't the Democratic party be better served by TWO candidates going after the ONE Republican nominee? Instead of ripping each other's throats out? And Obama fans, don't be so quick to blame Hillary either. Snipergate stole at least a week's worth of headlines that could have been about glaring Republican failures. I get that they can't agree to be President and Vice President. No one wants the consolation prize. But can't they at least agree to support one another against the Manchurian Candidate?

Everyone's all up on Obama, even despite the racist attempts to link him with a loony. But this race is a lot closer than some pundits would have you believe. And when one of the candidates loses, the other one doesn't necessarily win. As hard as it is to believe that an Obama backer could suddenly go against everything Obama stands for and vote for McCain, that's exactly what polls show if Hillary wins the race. That begs the question, Does the Democratic party want a candidate who's supporters would rather vote for the enemy than a fellow party member? How loyal are those Democrats?

It's not looking good for the party of light and hope... something I never thought could happen just a few short months ago. And that means it's not looking good for America. There may be people who still believe McCain is a maverick moderate, but clearly they haven't been watching how McCain's changed since his handlers said the code word, activated McCain's implant and turned him into a robot for the elephant party line. If McCain actually believes what he says (war is good! give the rich tax breaks!) then he may just be more incompetent than George W. Bush, who at least has an excuse. A lot of cocaine use.

Hopefully, the primaries today will cause one or both of the candidates to realize they're not getting anywhere by playing a game of division. Only by rallying their supporters around the party, and not themselves, can either of the candidates hope to reclaim this country from the crooks and liars who've owned it the past 8 years.

Ah, kickin it off with a patented Adam's Life rant. It's been a while.