Democrats and Alvin Greene: what goes around comes around

Representative James Clyburn of South Carolina is calling for an investigation. He thinks there were irregularities in the voting machines that gave the Democratic primary for US senate to Alvin Greene, the unemployed army veteran who didn't campaign but won the Democratic senate primary with 60% of the vote. Clyburn said there were "shenanigans" that led to Greene's victory.

But James Clyburn complaining about political shenanigans is like Bernie Madoff complaining about someone cheating at bingo.

Clyburn is no stranger to shenanigans. Though no one could prove it Clyburns fingerprints were all over Obama's playing the race card against Hillary Clinton in the South Carolina primary in 2008 when he accused her of diminishing Martin Luther King's legacy because she tried to make the point that it took an experienced, arm twisting and strong willed president like LBJ to get the civil rights act passed in 1964.

Clinton, who was absolutely right, was making the point that Obama lacked the experience, accomplishment, background, gravitas, conviction, or proven wherewithal to be president and accomplish what was needed to be done, something that was all too painfully clear as Obama botched the healthcare debate and sold out the public option, ironically the most important legislation since the civil rights act of 1964.

But Clinton was hammered by Obama and Clyburn over her statement and the press who clearly had their own agenda to elect Obama, piled on.

Clinton didn't say anything that Tom Brokaw didn't say in his biography and documentary about Dr. King, but no one complained that Brokaw was "diminishing" the legacy of King. Because it did take Johnson to twist arms, threaten, cajole or pat on the back the southern Democratic members of congress who were standing in the way.

Up until that moment, Pew Research showed that Obama and Clinton were splitting the African American vote almost 50-50. But after Obama played the race card in South Carolina and Clinton didn't hit back ( because the DNC twisted her arm behind the scenes and told her not to) Obama won the South Carolina primary with 90% of the black vote.And from that moment on, Obama won 90% of the black vote in every succeeding primary.

Then we had more shenanigans with the DNC trying to tilt the playing field for Obama( something they now certainly regret) when both the DNC and Obama successfully silenced the votes of 1,600,000 people in Florida and Michigan in one of the most disgraceful episodes in Democratic party history, largely because Clinton had landslided Obama in both states and that didn't fit the program.

Now, in many ways, Alvin Greene seems like karmic payback.

During the primaries the DNC tried to sell , with the help of sympathetic and sycophantic collection of journalists like Jonathan Alter, that it was somehow justice to deny those 1,600,000 voters their representative delegates at the DNC convention because two state party chairmen decided to move their primary dates up against the wishes of the DNC. This supposedly justified silencing the voices of 1,600,000 people.

Those 1,600,000 people simply went to the polls when their states attorneys general told them to go and they exercised their civic responsibilities and voted. The real problem was they voted for Hillary Clinton and not Obama and in landslide numbers and that wasn't the result the DNC and the press wanted. It seems not to have occurred to the DNC that if they wanted to punish anyone, maybe it should have been two state party chairman who changed the primary dates and ban them from the convention. Instead of punishing the people who made the decision, the DNC thought it made the most sense to punish 1,600,000 voters in Florida and Michigan who had nothing to do with the decision because those voters crushed Obama in both states in favor of Clinton. And of course the candidate who was saying "every voice must be heard" said nothing.

During the primaries if those votes and delegates won were legitimately counted as they should have been by a press who was clearly conspiring to see Obama win, then Clinton for most of the primary season would have been winning the popular vote and, until the caucuses would have been leading in the delegate count. But that was neither the perception or the reality the DNC ,Obama, or much of the mainstream press wanted. So the candidate who made speeches saying " every vote must count, every voice should be heard", was, as usual, talking with nothing real behind it. In fact, Obama did everything he could to keep those voices in Florida and Michigan from being heard.

Now there is Alvin Greene. And the Democratic party in South Carolina is crying foul and James Clyburn is crying shenanigans and complaining about voting machines and irregularties -- the same machines as far as anyone knows, that were used in the Democratic primary that Obama won in 2008 and the presidential election state wide. But there is nothing he can do. The Democratic party in South Carolina have no grounds to overturn the election or even investigate and they will do neither. And Alvin Greene is going to be the Democratic nominee for senate in South Carolina.

What goes around comes around. And it might not be the end of it.