Look it up in Google definitions or the good old Merriam-Webster if you need to: An oligarchy is rule by an elite few. From a story I just read about one of Hillary Clinton’s leading political advisers, Harold Ickes, I fear the Clinton camp is now truly desperate. I hate to think it of a party named “Democratic,” but Ickes’ comments sound suspiciously like the noise you hear from entrenched oligarchs. I refer you to these two paragraphs in particular:
Ickes, who disdains the word “superdelegate” as a media creation in favor of “automatic delegate,” told reporters that top party insiders — Democratic National Committee members, members of Congress and other ranking locally elected officials — who make up the 795 unpledged superdelegates have an “institutional interest” in the Democratic Party.
“These people are closely in touch with the issues and events,” Ickes said, noting the frequency that members of Congress and other elected officials must face the voters. “They are closely in touch with their constituents and, in my opinion, they are as much in touch, and probably more in touch, with what is going on … than delegates who are basically recruited by presidential campaigns” who are locally elected and pledged to a candidate.
As I understand it, both Obama’s campaign and Clinton’s campaign are lobbying for support from the superdelegates — but Obama has come out publicly urging the superdelegates to vote in line with the will of the people as expressed in the primaries and caucuses.
Sen. Clinton, don’t do anything to imply or consent to an oligarchy to get the Democratic nomination. If the sense of the primary process and the convention goes to Sen. Obama, I urge you to urge the superdelegates to act in accord with the will of the people.
Technorati Tags: Democratic primaries, presidential election, superdelegates, oligarchy, just a guy who reads the papers