If wishes were ponies...

Originally posted at Howard-Empowered People Via Oliver Willis, I found this post on Salon.com. I recommend going to Oliver's site for the commentary, but you don't want to miss the title of the pro-Hillary piece in Salon. It's classic Hillary-think: Why Hillary Clinton should be winning You see, while Hillary is not actually winning, she really should be. But reality is well-known for having a pro-Obama bias. And the subhead reads: Under a winner-take-all primary system, Hillary Clinton would have a wide lead over Barack Obama -- and enough delegates to clinch the nomination by June. As Oliver points out, "If Senator Clinton wished to run for the nomination of a party with a winner-take-all nomination process, she would be well within her legal rights to do so - she simply needed to have changed her party affiliation to Republican." Well, yeah. And actually, Demetrius told me a while back that he saw Paul Begala on some cable news show saying the Democrats should have a winner-take-all system like the Republicans, because it has "built-in momentum" or some such. Wouldn't that be rather, well, "undemocratic"? Especially coming from someone associated with Hillary, who is currently presenting herself as would-be champion of the downtodden, disenfranchised voters in Florida and Michigan. I also saw this earlier today, via Pho's Akron Pages. Part of the plea Hillary is currently sending out to her mailing list With 14 days to go until the people of Pennsylvania vote, the Obama campaign has decided to go all-out. They're trying to end the race for the White House with an unyielding media blitz. Right now, we're being outspent 4-1 on Pennsylvania television. So now, here's what we have to ask ourselves: Have we come this far in our history-making contest for the Democratic nomination only to see the race decided not by the quality of our ideas but by the size of our opponent's media budget? Maybe I'm misremembering this, but isn't that how Hillary was planning to win the nomination? By crushing any and all challengers under the weight of her mighty campaign war chest? But, I do understand. What it comes down to is that Hillary Clinton really really wants to be president. She wants it so much that she seems unable to even consider the possibility that it won't happen. I am reminded of a moms' group I attended when Son and Daughter in Ohio were much younger. One of the other mothers was asking how to respond to her little one's meltdown over being denied something s/he desperately wanted. Like maybe the child wanted a pony, but couldn't have one. The group leader suggested saying something like, "You wish you could have a pony." When I first heard that suggestion, I couldn't help laughing, because it sounded like sarcasm to me. "You wish!" But I learned to say it in a way that didn't feel that way to me. "You really wish you could have..." It was kind of Rogerian, actually. A way of acknowledging kids' feelings and making sure they know they've been heard...even if the answer is still "no". I'm glad I had some good role models to teach me the importance of showing empathy toward toddlers and preschoolers. The "you can't always get what you want" lesson is a tough one for little kids, and they deserve our compassion as they are learning it. But when we're talking about 60 year old senators, my patience and compassion wear a bit thin... Here's your pony, Hillary. Now get out of the damn race!