For the winners--the ones on the top looking down--an asterisk is the kiss of death. Ask baseball's new home run king, who may as well legally change his last name to Bonds*. Or President George W. Bush*, indelibly linked to an election won in court.
While cute as a snowflake in appearance, this little star belies scrutiny, demanding further explanation, forever challenging any achievement to which it is affixed. Which explains why those not on top cling to its five tiny tenticles (or six, depending on the manufacturer of your computer) as if dangling from a precipice.
Okay, that's a bit dramatic. Suffice to say, a tiny whiff of foul air can cause the defeated to question the validity of any competition, or the legitimacy of its victor. An asterisk provides them with an ambiguous photo-finish of sorts, keeping ajar the door to eternal speculation. Could there have been wrong-doing? Horseplay? Scull-duggery? There's always scull-duggery, right? The fish never get smaller. And soon, enough uncertainty is cast that the recognized champion can never truly be seen as the real champion.
If the Democratic Party fails to pull together shotgun primary elections in Florida and Michigan, candidate Hillary Clinton--lacking elected delegates, states won and popular vote totals--will turn her attention to this most prickly of punctuation marks. It's her her exit music, her one ticket out. A way for her to lose without really being defeated and keep her own drum beating well into the next decade. Should this battle end short of the convention, Hillary will show up in Denver wearing her * like a hound's tooth pants suit. And as she stands at the podium and exclaims, "I hereby give my unconditional support to our party's nominee, Barack Obama*!"--we all will learn what an asterisk sounds like.
You won't see a * in the Illinois senator's name. Not immediately, at least. But somewhere in her speech, perhaps under the thin veil of "humor" she uses so prolifically (I put it in quotes because it resembles bitter, biting sarcasm more than anything else) you will hear the *. Maybe it will be a simple "even though I won two big states we disqualified" or "despite my attempts to have the voices of the people heard in Florida..." Or something even less subtle. This tiny little phrase will float out of her mouth, satisfying the hordes of female supporters and causing the eager media to jot down her every next thought as the new truth, so they can spread her spin epidemically through every outlet.
I am a Michigan resident. I was not allowed to cast my vote for the person I wanted as my president. Last fall, the state's democratic party moved up its primary date in clear violation of DNC rules. The party's braintrust (boy oh boy am I taking liberties there) decided to strip the state's delegates and unseat them for the Denver convention. The national party candidates--Clinton, Obama, Edwards, Richardson, etc.--all ostensibly agreed to abide by the DNC's decision and not campaign in the state nor participate in its primary. Yet for some reason, while every other major candidate took their names off the ballot, the former First Lady didn't touch hers--"Oops, was I supposed to do that?"
So, my choices on the ballot were Hillary, the line marked "Uncommitted", or one of the Republican candidates--most notably John McCain, Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee.
Being that I have been an Obama supporter (gee, can you tell?) since last December, I had planned to vote for one of the GOP candidates. I think it was going to be Huckabee. Mitt had the private sector experience, as he would let anyone waiting for an elevator know. But he had this sleaziness to him that just wasn't right. I let intuition guide most of my initial impressions. McCain is a trigger-happy man in his 70s in need of anger management. And it's just... let's just say it's not a good trifecta. Huckabee, while the thought of this Arkansas gubernatorial pipeline to the Oval Office thing makes me throw up in my mouth a little bit, is nonetheless a governor. So he's had to run a state, which is an important though not essential step. He is principled, in fact no one really had taken issue with his character.
He's just, you know, Mike Huckabee. I like having a clean dashboard. I like ceiling white paint. I like new socks and a freshly edged driveway and a recharged cell phone battery with four bars. I'm just not excited about it. These things don't stir me. Neither does this election season's version of Dr. Phil.
So I had sufficiently practiced holding my breath for the trip to the ballot box... and then, THE DAY BEFORE THE PRIMARY, I decided to investigate this "uncommitted" thing further. And a tiny supplemental page on the Michigan party website nearly put me into shock.
Apparrently, the law stated that, should a decision be made subsequently to seat the delegates at the convention, they would be free to vote for whomever they choose... PROVIDED that 15% of the people choose "uncommitted" on the ballot. Otherwise, if "uncommitted" were to garner less than 15%, the delegates, if seated, would be required to vote for the candidate who won the primary. And gee, what do you know, there was one major candidate who--oops!--forgot to remove their name. So Hillary would get them all, will of the people be damned.
Now do I think Hillary Clinton intentionally left her name on the ballot to take advantage of this little-known stipulation? Um, hell yes. The same way she knew what she was doing when she flew to Florida the day before their primary for a big smiley photo-op on the airport tarmac while on her way to plan her "victory party" the following night. (Where's that askteris when you need it?)
So I phoned, emailed and yelled out my window to all the Michigan democrats planning on voting Republican, to vote "uncommitted" instead. No one knew it was something other than throwing your vote away. No one knew it really mattered. It was the "anti-Hillary" vote that really counted. So as it turned out, "uncommitted" received 40% of the vote. Hillary received 55%, but it didn't matter. She couldn't steal the state's delegates.
But she hasn't stopped trying. All year long--in speeches, on her web site, even spinning some networks into believing it too--she has shamelessly claimed victory in both states. And now, despite her comments last October that "Michigan and Florida do not count", she has done an about-face, a show of pure desperation, and is trying a last-gasp delegate grab. The problem is, there is NO WAY to re-do the primaries in any way that can be construed as fair. (I'll explain later... in fact, it will be the topic of my next post, so stay tuned.)
Even though it jeopardizes my candidate's chances of winning the nomination, I hope I get to vote again, and that it counts this time. First, because it's my right as an American, and I do take that right seriously. Second, becausI am currently one of FOUR people in the entire state of Miichigan with an Obama sticker in my car. I like the political season, the hype, the campaign stops, etc. Particulary if I have a candidate I like. And third, because if we don't have a primary that counts, and if Florida doesn't count, then the results of the national primaries will not be beyond dispute.
Then Hillary would not have really lost, and Obama would not have really won. Oops, I mean Obama*.
