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Hilary Clinton has compared the Democratic Party’s failure to count the Florida and Michigan Democratic primary votes to the election crisis in Zimbabwe. There may be one similarity, but it is not the one Clinton claims.
CBS News reportsthat the candidate complained that in Michigan and Florida,
"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. "So we can never take for granted our precious right to vote."
There are so many obvious differences between the Florida and Michigan Democratic primaries and the Zimbabwe election crisis that it is difficult to know where to begin. But perhaps there is one similarity: in Zimbabwe, a losing candidate, incumbent Robert Mugabe, seeing his impending defeat, has worked to change an outcome produced under pre-existing rules. In arguing that the Democratic party should abandon its rules post-hoc – rules Clinton herself agreed to before the voting – she makes a parallel move.
The Clintons never did have much of a grasp of history. All Hillary needed to do was wave the "bloody short" of the 2000 Florida election contest and tweak Obama with the shibboleth of "count every vote!"
Coincidentally while in the loo this morning I browsed through a National Geographic, November 1981 issue (Vol. 160, No. 5) left behind by our children featuring "After Rhodesia, Zimbabwe" at page 616, which provides background for Mary's post. Quite a lot has happened since 1981.
Anderson- is it really necessary to explain why I think it is silly to equate Clinton with a brutal dictator who is using violence to overturn an election? Even if one thinks that Clinton has no legitimate claim as to why she should be the nominee, she is only guilty of trying to persuade people with ridiculous arguments. You don't think that it is silly to compare her to Mugabe? Really?