People Poker: Hillary Rosen And Obama's Victory - Ashley Long

People Poker

I loved Hillary Rosen's blog on Wednesday. She has been a long time supporter of Hillary Clinton and was genuinely disappointed when Sen. Clinton lost the Democratic nomination.

She was supremely disappointed, however, at the way Sen. Clinton handled the events of this past week. The last three lines of this piece, in response to Sen. Clinton's statement that she was waiting to see how she could "use" her 18 million voters, are my favorite:

"I will enthusiastically support Barack Obama's campaign. Because I am not a bargaining chip. I am a Democrat."

I posted a few days ago about how we might bring the party together at the convention. What philosophy or mantra or cause could join all Democrats together as one unified force after such a contentious campaign? I still can't completely answer that one, but I can say that Ms. Rosen has hit on something.

What will not serve us well is looking at each of our delegates, at each of our voters, as numbers on tally sheets. We have spent an inordinate amount of time over the last year tallying delegates and looking at magic numbers. Now, we need to get behind the numbers and into the reason those voters and delegates cast their votes in the way they did and will at the convention. It is in studying that data that we may find a way to unify our party and, in doing so, take back the White House.