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Tuesday, June 7, 2016

The Well-Scripted History

Supposedly history unfolds before our eyes and no one knows ahead of time what will happen.  It's an interesting point of view, but one which isn't actually correct.  Too often in today's world, events have been planned in advance.  Just last night we had one of those planned events.

Hillary Clinton was announced to have gotten a majority of the delegates for the Democrat nomination.  That's right, yesterday, a sufficient number of superdelegates threw their votes behind Hillary that she was able to claim victory.  Now why was that?  What happened on June 6th that was so important that a great many superdelegates made the jump to Hillary?  The answer is that nothing happened, nothing at all.  The real reason why Hillary got the votes yesterday is that her position in California was sagging and it looked quite likely that she would "win" the nomination by losing California.  The Clinton machine couldn't let that happen; it would make her look weak.  Instead, Clinton got supposedly uncommitted delegates to make the announcement yesterday so that she could get all that favorable publicity about winning without having to explain away why she lost in California.  Indeed, no matter what happens in California now, Hillary will have an explanation.  If she wins, it is of course that the Democrats wanted her.  If she loses, it is of course because her supporters knew there was no longer any need for them to vote.  There's a narrative either way.

History, however, is not supposed to be scripted.  In fact, history has a way of biting those who try to control it.  I wonder just how much rancor there will be in Philadelphia when Hillary tries to claim her "historic" prize.  Hillary won't be able to control that one.

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