Something is wrong when politics ceases to be a discussion of issues, and instead turns into a game of manipulation and semantics.At its worst, it is a by-any-meansnecessary grab of votes with little gravitas and no dignity. In our estimation, it is this game that is being played by Sen. Hillary Clinton in her White House bid against rival Sen. Barack Obama.To illustrate this, we need some backstory. Political parties are technically private organizations. As such, they can make their own rules about assigning delegates from different states. It is the party that decides the order and timing of the primaries, and they can punish states for violating the rules of their party by changing their primary dates against party rulings.So when Florida and Michigan moved their democratic primaries up without permission, the party punished them by stripping away their delegates. Whether this is a wise or even just move is up for debate. What isn’t up for debate is the fact that both campaigns agreed to observe this, and both contenders signed pledges not to campaign in these places. And even though they held a vote anyway, Obama wasn’t even on the ballot in Michigan.As a result, Clinton won landslide victories in both states – effectively winning delegates that will have no say at the national convention where all pledged delegates and un-pledged “superdelegates”selected in each state’s primary come to vote, officially confirming the nominee.For a long time, this seemed like it would be a non-issue, at least as far as deciding the nominee is concerned. But now, lagging in the polls and vote counts, Hillary wants those delegates to have a say.This would be fine if she had been championing this cause from the start. But only issuing from her lips now, in a time of crisis, her words about “giving florida a voice” ring hollow.This move speaks volumes about the candidate, and none of it is good. Its most profound suggestion, though, is that she respects the letter, but not the spirit, of the law – precisely the type of thinking that has led the greater part of this country to despise the sitting president, who regularly justifies practices like spying on American citizens and torturing suspected terrorists by taking artistic license with our laws.And it is a shameless attempt to manipulate the very real representative concerns of these states into a movement that is, by default, pro-Hillary.These are the moves of a desperate candidate, one who has very few options left on the table.The only respectable move – oddly the one of someone with the professionalism to become president – is to drop out.
