And The Democratic Primary Campaign Battle Goes On (UPDATED)

Clinton goes after Obama…Obama goes after McCain…and some Clinton supporters point to a video showing the “Ugly Sexist Vilification Of Hillary Clinton.” On balance, it sounds as if Obama is the one keeping his eye of the Democratic party’s main task: starting to focus some of the fire on McCain versus on other Democrats.

Hillary supporter Tom Watson believes Obama must address the sexism issue. Newshogger’s Libby Spencer says she doesn’t believe she should blame Obama.

Balloon Juice’s John Cole looks at it and think’s its guilt by association:

[It] is nothing more than a hit piece on Obama. Otherwise, I am not sure why anyone thinks it is fair or appropriate to seem to beg Obama to apologize for a bunch of jackasses holding up an “Iron my shirt” sign at a Hillary event. Same for the rest of the SHOCKING youtube video.

Maybe this is just the more rabid wing of the Clinton supporters moving into the anger phase.

Indeed, my reaction when I viewed it was the same as Cole’s: that there seems to be a bit more there than just anger due to bias showed against Clinton by some bozos who do not represent the vast number of Obama (or McCain, or Edwards, or Romney) supporters on the campaign trial. Warning to Democrats: Whether Clinton or Obama becomes the nominee, if he/she seems close to the nomination and either is pressured into making a mea culpa that is not totally deserved it will NOT help your party win the White House in 2008.

If that, indeed, is still the general point of a Presidential election campaign for partisans — that their party’s candidate (even the one they didn’t support) wins and wins big so other Democrats down the ticket can win as well.

UPDATE: In case you are one of the many who didn’t realize it, by not doing what Clinton wants in terms of seating delegates, etc and by implication by not nominating her according to how her campaign sees the rules, “the Democratic Party has sent a signal to women that Hillary’s candidacy isn’t historic.”

However, make no mistake about it, the Democratic Party has sent a signal to women that Hillary’s candidacy isn’t historic. They’re nonchalance over her fight about Michigan and Florida, as well as the undemocratic nature of caucuses, not to mention their breezy attitude about pushing her out before this race is through has wounded a lot of people. Ted Kennedy took his fight to the floor with far less of a case than Hillary Clinton has today, yet she’s being screamed at to get out. The Democratic elite seem to be saying that the little women got their play in the political pond, but let’s get serious, shall we? With the proclamation that Obama was the “presumptive nominee” ready to declare “victory” on May 20th, the women of the Democratic Party were once again proclaimed invisible and expected to fall in line for The One.

Try winning in November without them.

Problem: Since when is a political party supposed to yield to the demands of a candidate to affirm that the nomination of an aspiring candidate who is a black or a woman or a Jew or a Latino or an Asian-American is historical?

Parties aren’t about affirming historical natures — just nominating candidates according to whatever rules they have in place at the time and then trying to win elections.

When Al Gore picked Joe Lieberman as his running mate, it wasn’t because he wanted to put someone from my religion on the ticket. He was picked for other qualities — and it was also a historic event.

The most prominent example of how this works is in the state of Louisiana, where the GOP nominated Bobby Jindal, a conservative Republican congressman from the New Orleans suburbs. He wasn’t given the nomination because the party wanted to — or felt it had to — make a historic statement and make him the nation’s first Indian-American governor. He got the nomination because he won the nomination and it was also therefore historical.

He is also proving to be a solid governor. And there is talk now of him possibly being an attractive candidate to be McCain’s running mate.

And — no — he isn’t under consideration for that because Republican pundits, Republican bigwigs or McCain believe the Republican party is obligated to make a historical statement and put a Indian-American on the ticket. He’ll be picked because of his overall qualities.

And not because they fear they will be racists if they don’t choose him.

If Clinton doesn’t get it, analysts who are not hooked up with the Clinton campaign or who don’t have an emotional vested interest in her nomination will most assuredly judge it was due to her staff errors, mistakes she and her husband made, a whopping mistake spelled M-A-R-K P-E-N-N and another factor that hasn’t gotten much coverage: some bruised feelings among powerful Democrats who now feel they can break from the Clintons.

READ THIS. There are people turning on the Clintons now in droves. Due to various factors — not because Hillary Clinton is a woman — some powerful Democrats are now increasingly unsympathetic to Bill and Hillary.

Gender and race bias can and do play political roles. But no party is obligated to make a historical statement. Candidates are obligated to win by the rules of the nomination and election games. Sometimes they make mistakes and don’t pay a price…sometimes they do pay a price.

And may the best man (black, white, Jewish, Hispanic, Indian-American, Asian-American) or woman (black, white, Jewish, Hispanic, Indian-American, Asian-American) win…

FOOTNOTE: And if Clinton does in the end get it, it won’t be because the Democratic party felt it had to make a statement about the historical nature of her candidacy but for other hard-hosed reasons — the kind of historical reasons for which candidates get nominations.