Below The Beltway

Her rhetoric about seating the delegations, and counting the votes, from Michigan and Florida is becoming more and more demagogue-like:

BOCA RATON, Fla. - Hillary Clinton compared her effort to seat Florida and Michigan delegates to epic American struggles, including those to free the slaves and win the right to vote for blacks and women.

(…)

“In Florida, you learned the hard way what happens when your votes aren’t counted and the candidate with fewer votes is declared the winner,” she said. “The lesson of 2000 here in Florida is crystal clear: if any votes aren’t count, the will of the people isn’t realized and our democracy is diminished.”

(…)

She said “there’s a reason why so many have fought so hard and sacrificed so much. It’s because they knew that to be a citizen of this country is to have the right and responsibility to help shape its future. Not just to have your voice heard but to have it count. People have fought hard because they knew their vote was at stake and so was their children’s futures.

Those people, she said “refused to accept their assigned place as second-class citizens. Men and women who saw America not as it was, but as it could and should be, and committed themselves to extending the frontiers of our democracy. The abolitionists and all who fought to end slavery and ensure freedom came with the full right of citizenship. The tenacious women and a few brave men who gathered at the Seneca Falls convention back in 1848 to demand the right to vote.”

“Because of those who have come before, Sen. Obama and I have and so many of you have this precious right today. Because of all that has been done, we are in this historic presidential election. And I believe that both Sen. Obama and myself have an obligation as potential Democratic nominees - in fact we all have an obligation as Democrats - to carry on this legacy and ensure that in our nominating process, every voice is heard and every single vote is counted.”

And as if that weren’t bad enough, she compared the DNC’s exercise of authority over the delegations to outright vote fraud in Zimbabwe:

Desperate to get attention for her cause to seat Florida and Michigan delegates, Hillary Clinton compared the plight of Zimbabweans in their recent fraudulent election to the uncounted votes of Michigan and Florida voters saying it is wrong when “people go through the motions of an election only to have them discarded and disregarded.”

“We’re seeing that right now in Zimbabwe,” Clinton explained. “Tragically, an election was held, the president lost, they refused to abide by the will of the people,” Clinton told the crowd of senior citizens at a retirement community in south Florida.

Of course, she was singing an entirely different tune last year when the DNC sanctions were imposed:

PORTSMOUTH, N.H., Sept. 1 — Three of the major Democratic presidential candidates on Saturday pledged not to campaign in Florida, Michigan and other states trying to leapfrog the 2008 primary calendar, a move that solidified the importance of the opening contests of Iowa and New Hampshire.

Hours after Senator Barack Obama of Illinois and former Senator John Edwards of North Carolina agreed to sign a loyalty pledge put forward by party officials in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York followed suit. The decision seemed to dash any hopes of Mrs. Clinton relying on a strong showing in Florida as a springboard to the nomination.

“We believe Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina play a unique and special role in the nominating process,” Patti Solis Doyle, the Clinton campaign manager, said in a statement.

Of course, that was back when Hillary was leading in the polls.

Understandably, the blogospheric reaction has been swift and severe.

Jonathan Chait is pretty blunt:

This gambit by Clinton is simply an attempt to steal the nomination. It’s obviously not going to work, because Democratic superdelegates don’t want to commit suicide. But this episode is very revealing about Clinton’s character. I try not to make moralistic characterological judgments about politicians, because all politicians compromise their ideals in the pursuit of power. There are no angels in this business. Clinton’s gambit, however, truly is breathtaking.

If she’s consciously lying, it’s a shockingly cynical move. I don’t think she’s lying. I think she’s so convinced of her own morality and historical importance that she can whip herself into a moralistic fervor to support nearly any position that might benefit her, however crass and sleazy. It’s not just that she’s convinced herself it’s okay to try to steal the nomination, she has also appropriated the most sacred legacies of liberalism for her effort to do so. She is proving herself temperamentally unfit for the presidency.

Chait has a point, but it leads me to wonder about what’s going on in Camp Clinton these days. As I’ve noted before, it’s pretty much mathematically impossible for Hillary Clinton to win the nomination even if Florida and Michigan are seated based on the January primaries. But I don’t think that matters to Hillary, because it isn’t even about winning, it’s about her.

Joe Gandelman agrees:

Clinton is telling the Democratic party apparatus, and superdelegates who may not have tilted towards her, that if they don’t agree with what she asks for now that she didn’t advocate when she and other candidates signed the agreements not to contest the states, then that means the party “won’t even listen” to Florida and Michigan at all.

Hot button politics? Yes.

And some Democrats will cheer her on and say this shows what she could do against McCain.

But the chiller for some voters will be: is this a sign of how she would govern if she wins the Oval Office?

Fortunately, we’ll never, ever have to find out.

H/T: Andrew Sullivan