Clinton's Campaign Has Consequences

Tomorrow the DNC rules committee will meet to discuss what to do with the votes from Florida and Michigan. I don't think I need to go into the backstory on this one, I'm sure you guys know what's going on. From what I've heard, it's pretty unlikely that Clinton will get her way, at least not without serious compromises. But let's be clear about this: Clinton's fierce desire to change the rules mid-contest, and her supporters' fierce support for that change, is extremely worrisome not just for the Democratic party (which is obvious) but for democracy itself.

A constitutional representative democracy like ours can't survive without a series of rules that are respected and follow by the citizens and their government, and once respect for those rules is lost it can be pretty hard to get it back; to that effect, my biggest problem with the Bush administration is its callous disregard for the rule of law. I'm worried that if we don't make absolutely sure that the next presidential administration holds the law-breaking members of the Bush administration accountable and respects the rule of law to a very precise degree, people may get used to the idea of the political process as the plaything of political ends and of rules as things to be kept around only when useful, and that could put us on a very dangerous and potentially anti-democratic path.

Hillary Clinton's campaign is scarily emblematic of that worry. Clinton has already blatantly ignored the rules by placing her name on the Michigan ballot and she's trying to do so again by clamoring to seat all the Florida and Michigan delegates. It's obvious from this campaign that what's important for her above all else is the result, and whether she breaks the rules in trying to get that result is 100% unimportant to her. Her goal of getting the Democratic nomination is less objectionable to us than the Bush administration's goal of legalizing torture, but the fact that her goals are less objectionable to us isn't the point; the point is that, like George W Bush, the rules are important to her only to the extent that they help her, and when they don't she would toss them out. Don't try to minimize what she's done by saying this is just campaign season and that she'd change in the White House. Nothing about Clinton's character suggests that this rule-breaking is an isolated st of incidents, and in fact the opposite is true (witness her transgressions in the Watergate investigation). A Clinton presidency could give us some beneficial policy changes, but as far as long-term democracy and rule of law issues go, I think it would be as much a disaster as Bush's presidency has been.

And in fact I think Clinton's campaign has already proven itself to be democratically dangerous in the way it's inspired her supporters to support a serious rule change to benefit their favored end (getting Clinton the nomination). For her supporters, the way the game is played has become as unimportant as it is to Clinton; all they care about is the result, and the rules be damned. After 7 years of seeing George W Bush get his way by ignoring and straight up breaking the rules, they've come to view rule-breaking as a legitimate way to achieve political ends. Again, as far as democracy goes, that's worrying.

This is all the more dangerous because it's being couched in the language of democracy. Clinton and her supporters claim that they want every vote counted, as if real democratic elections and not one-sided farces had been held in Florida and Michigan, and as if there were anything democratic about changing the rules of a contest to unfairly favor one participant after all the participants had agreed to them. Whether Clinton intends it or not (and I'm sure she doesn't), this is a Trojan argument, wheeled into the Democratic city in the name of democracy but bursting with anti-democratic consequences. Convincing people that rule-breaking would further democracy instead of being harmful to it is a very serious consequence of this campaign, just as is convincing people that rule-breaking is legitimate in the first place.

For the Democratic party to seriously consider changing the rules to suit Clinton and her supporters, then, is for it to take seriously the idea that political goals should be so elevated above the political process as to make that process a joke. And... yeah, that worries me. I hope the DNC will decide not to change its rules, but even if it keeps its rules the same, the Clinton campaign has already shown itself as both emblematic of and a further cause for damage to democracy.