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Nov. 23, 2009
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Nov. 19, 2009
Binyamin L. Jolkovsky: Please Listen to this Godcast (5 minutes)
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Nov. 18, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: What Judaism has to say about the secret of the Mona Lisa's smile
JWisdom.com: The (Jewish) Dating Game with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (8 minutes)
Nov. 17, 2009
Steven Emerson: How Does the 4th Amendment Impact Terror Finance Investigations?
JWisdom.com: If Frank Sinatra married Edith Piaf with Rabbi Y.Y. Rubinstein (2 minutes) Life lessons from what would be regarded as the most inappropriate lyrics ever sung
Nov. 16, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir : When borrowing is stealing
JWisdom.com: Deconstructing faith with Rabbi Warren Goldstein (9 minutes)
Nov. 13, 2009
JWisdom.com Sarah's subjective reality with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 6 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick: Obama's failure, Netanyahu's opportunity
Nov. 12, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet By Marialisa Calta : A sweet sweet potato treat
JWisdom.com Does God get tired? with Rabbi Harvey Belovski ( 5 minutes)
Nov. 11, 2009
Rabbi Avi Shafran: Jews and money: When anti-Semitism isn't
JWisdom.com Marriages are not made in Heaven with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (VERY fast 15 minutes)
Nov. 10, 2009
Michael Doyle: Author of book exposing CAIR ordered to remove supporting documents from Web
JWisdom.com If the creation so loudly shouts the existence of the Creator, why aren't more people believers? with Rabbi Naftali Brawer (9 minutes)
Nov. 9, 2009
Mark Steyn: Shooter exposes hole in U.S. terror strategy
JWisdom.com It's never too late to have a happy childhood with Sarah Chana Radcliffe (5 minutes)
Nov. 6, 2009
Rabbi Berel Wein: Choosing to hear
JWisdom.com Zero to 1/60th: How to Empower An Hour with Gavriel Aryeh Sande (7 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick The mullahs' big week
Suzanne Fields A Fallen Wall for Fallen Man
Nov. 5, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet: Three scrumptious -- but simple -- butternut squash dishes
JWisdom.com Hidden Hints: Unlocking Faith & Prayer with Rabbi Jay Yaacov Schwartz (10 minutes)
Nov. 4, 2009
Tom Hamburger and Kim Geiger: Should prayers be covered?
JWisdom.com When God played peacemaker With Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Nov. 3, 2009
Martin Peretz: Beware, Barack. Beware, Rahm. Beware, Axelrod
JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater? With Sara Yoheved Rigler (10 minutes)
Nov. 2, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The Holocaust is now on Facebook
JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes)
Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review Feb. 15, 2008 / 9 Adar I 5768

Hillary — by any means necessary

By Rich Lowry


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | For two and a half months now, Democrats have been voting in primaries and meeting in caucuses to select their nominee for president. The last gasp of Hillary Clinton's campaign could be telling them, in effect, that they shouldn't have bothered.


Clinton trails Barack Obama among pledged delegates (by roughly 100), in the overall popular vote (by four points in states that were contested) and in states won (by about two to one). She could make up ground with convincing wins in the big states of Ohio and Texas in March, but she'll be hard-pressed even then to pull ahead of Obama, according to the analysis of NBC News' influential political tipsheet "First Read."


That leaves Clinton the appropriately graceless expedient of trying to find ways around the will of Democratic voters. Her campaign will, if necessary, push to have the Michigan and Florida delegations seated at the Democratic Convention. She won those states overwhelmingly — because no one competed there. Candidates made commitments not to campaign in the two states that were stripped of their delegates because they advanced the dates of their primaries in defiance of party rules.


Florida and Michigan show that if only she hadn't had to run against anyone, Hillary might have a lock on this race. Or at least a lead: In Michigan, where she was the only major candidate on the ballot, she beat "uncommitted" by just 15 points. Her potential Florida and Michigan gambit raises the question of why anyone in the Democratic Party thought the Clintons would abide by an agreement. Obama is audaciously hopeful; Clinton is audaciously shameless.


Then, there are the so-called superdelegates. They are roughly 800 Democratic elected officials who can decide on their own which candidate to back regardless of the primaries and caucuses. Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson says there is no difference between delegates chosen by voters and the superdelegates — they are all delegates with a vote at the convention. True enough, except one tranche of delegates has a democratic legitimacy the other doesn't.


If the current state of the race holds, neither Clinton nor Obama will get to the 2,025 delegates needed to win through the primaries and caucuses. Both will need superdelegates to win. The difference is that Clinton might be asking them to ignore the explicit preferences of the public. Winning this way will throw up the loudest cry of "corrupt bargain" since Andrew Jackson lost to John Quincy Adams in 1824 in a contested election that went to the House of Representatives.


Of course, our political system is not designed to be perfectly democratic. Perhaps seasoned pols, the superdelegates, know best. But Democrats reflexively denounce any check on the naked popular will as tantamount to "disenfranchisement," especially of black voters. Already, Al Sharpton and NAACP head Julian Bond are arguing over how racist it is not to seat the Florida and Michigan delegations. If Clinton denies Obama the nomination despite losing the popular vote, she will open herself to inflammatory charges of disregarding black votes of the sort that she and her husband would eagerly resort to if circumstances were different.


Hillary herself was once a democratic supremacist. After the disputed 2000 election, she supported abolishing the Electoral College. "I believe strongly that in a democracy," she said, "we should respect the will of the people." At least until that strong belief ran up against her pursuit of a presidential nomination. "I hope no one is ever in doubt again about whether their vote counts," she said. This turns out to have been a wan hope.


Her attitude clearly is to win, no matter how, and worry about the repair job later. There's no benefit to her in being a graceful loser, since she'll probably never run again. And besides, she's not going to defer to a callow, two-year senator trying to deny her what she's rightfully entitled. There's only ethic that accords with her interests and her style — by any means necessary.

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© 2008 King Features Syndicate

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