Howard Mugabe - Head of DNC

The more I think back to all that I read about the DNC deal last weekend, the more I keep thinking I that was reading about an election run by Robert Mugabe, president of Zimbabwe.

Here's a perfectly good reason to believe that paradigm; what the DNC did to Michigan.

But the Michigan decision is a jaw dropper. By setting aside election results to Hillary's disadvantage, the DNC has saddled its likely nominee with an enraged opponent who now has every incentive to carry the fight through the summertime. Simultaneously, it has told Michigan voters that the DNC - and by extension, its nominee, Obama - is willing to set aside election results it does not like. That cannot have a positive effect on Michigan swing voters - and Obama needs to carry Michigan in the fall to have any shot at victory.

The Clintons' unwillingness to accept defeat is legendary. Yet the DNC has thrown sand in the face of a candidate who is already claiming sexism underlies the opposition to her campaign. Never underestimate the fury of a woman scorned, the adage goes.
Now she can stay in the race with yet another rationale for her candidacy - she is fighting for democratic principles. And her working class voters in Michigan will hear that message.

This decision violates a cardinal rule of warfare first promulgated by the Chinese strategist Sun Tzu in his classic The Art of War - always give your enemy the opportunity to retreat. The corollary to a political campaign is that one must always give one's opponent the opportunity to bow out gracefully. Manipulating the rules to ensure Hillary cannot possibly win does not give her that opportunity, and given the psychology of the individual in question, virtually ensures a continued battle.

In Obama's favorite game, basketball, trash talk and demonstrating your dominance by dunking the ball over your opponent is expected. Employing these tactics in politics, particularly intra-party politics, is not very good sense.

It is particularly poor sense given that Obama was going to win the nomination anyway because the clear sense of the superdelegates is to back Obama and end the fight. This decision was as unnecessary as it is inflammatory.

Needless to say, the parallels to a Robert Mugabe run election and or country is quite eerie.