Answer to Lanny Davis and Hillary Clinton Calling for Fixing the Nomination

Lanny is a brilliant and articulate voice of a past that Americans want ended and his argument, and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s (D-N.Y.), that the will of the people can be overturned by the arrogance of insiders, is wrong, and will lose.

It is revealing that Lanny quotes the history of the past, not even the 1990s, but the 1980s. He quotes the dead hand of a past that is abhorrent to the enormous majority of Americans who want business as usual in politics ended, and want the future to begin, now.

In Lanny’s world, and Sen. Clinton’s world, the primaries mean nothing. The caucuses mean nothing. The surge of voters in record and historic numbers mean nothing.

The American people, except for party insiders, mean nothing. Democracy means nothing.

They quote the 1990s, and they quote the 1980s, and argue for a restoration of the past, a coronation of the insiders, a contempt for the voters of America. Voters do not exist in this world of the past, unless they serve some tactical and manipulative purpose for those who seek power for themselves and those who believe they are smarter, and more worthy, than those who go to the polls.

If voters want a future that is different, they are ignored, disregarded, thrown away as though the primaries did not happen. As though caucuses did not happen. As though voters did not vote.

As though elections have no meaning. As though democracy has no purpose.

This is the kind of elitism and arrogance of power that the American people reject in record numbers. It is an elitism that argues that a few Americans in the inner circles of power are morally, intellectually or politically superior to the American people, who are not invited into, or respected by, these insider circles of power that are so out of touch with America in 2008.

In this view, the American people are rabble who cannot be trusted, and their dreams for America refuse to be discarded, by those who claim to know better than us what is right, when in truth the only thing they know is what gets them the power they crave, regardless of the cost.

I know more than my share of superdelegates and propose that both Hillary and Lanny are wrong. The supers will not throw out the verdict of those who attend the primaries and caucuses. They will not stomp on the democratic rights of those who vote for their candidate. We shall see who is right.

I will let Lanny claim the mantle of the 1980s and let Hillary stand for the restoration of the 1990s with the tactics and attitudes that are held in near universal disrepute by the people of a nation who want true change, authentic change, and a better future.

This is the year when the people are right and the politicians are wrong and the future is now. Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) is winning this nomination because he embodies the best of the past, the movements of the present and the hope of the future.

Sooner than the experts believe, the superdelegates will join the people rather than resist the tides of history and the aspirations of voters.

In America the people rule, and those who do not honor this will be left behind.