This is how 18 million voters will view the Democratic Convention if the roll call vote is "symbolic".
"After a primary season where the leadership of the DNC proclaimed a winner when there was none, when neither candidate had the required 2/3 majority to win the nomination but one was called the winner anyway, when the first woman candidate for President who was also the popular vote winner, and who won more votes than any Democratic primary candidate in history had to "negotiate" to have her name placed in nomination even though it was her right, after seven months of media bias so egregious it was satirized on Saturday Night Life, anything less than a Democratic Convention conduct according to the highest standards of democracy and in strict accordance with Democratic Party rules will be, for more than 18 million voters, the last straw."
There can be no symbolic vote.
Whether Senator Obama hoped to reduce a democratic institution to a "symbolic gesture" as a matter of pride, we don't know.
Senator Obama's psyche is not our concern.
Democracy is!
Symbolic votes are what they do in China. It's what they do in Iran. It's what they did in the Soviet Union.
It's not what we do in America...
The roll call vote must reflect the highest standards of the Democratic Party. If there is even a hint that Senator Clinton is not being afforded an equal opportunity to win the nomination as Democratic Party rules provide, if there is even a suggestion that the vote is not being conducted in an honest and democratic way, it could not only be the last straw for more than 18 million voters, it could be the straw that breaks the Democratic Party's back.
"Keep the Democratic Party democratic!"
Contributor: Hiedi Li Feldman, J.D., Ph.D.
Denver Political Activist
