Tammy Baldwin Ought to Support Obama Now

Update: John Nichols: A Baldwin shift to Obama could send crucial message

Voters in US Rep. Tammy Baldwin’s 2nd congressional district in Wisconsin on Feb. 19 delivered a resounding victory to Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton—65 to 34 percent.

As a superdelegate, Rep. Baldwin has pledged her support behind Hillary Clinton.

Now Clinton has engaged in unrelenting negative attacks on Obama using the Republican tactics of personal destruction, dubbed the “kitchen sink” strategy. [See Dear Hillary, We're Breaking Up for an instructive overview.]

In this despicable enterprise, Clinton is destined to fail, but not without first doing a lot of harm.

If Hillary Clinton were to win the remaining 12 Democratic contests by 10 points each (a vanishingly remote possibility), Clinton would still be well short of winning the total delegates awarded by voters in the Democratic caucuses/primaries.

Clinton knows this. So beyond the kitchen sink strategy, Clinton seeks to change the rules in the middle of the game and seat the Michigan and Florida delegations, though neither state hosted an election in which the candidates campaigned (as agreed to by all candidates), with Obama’s name not even on the ballot in Michigan.

Clinton is ready to disregard the will of all the new voters who have lifted Obama to frontrunner status, earning the most popular votes and pledged delegates, and is trying to rewrite the ground rules in the middle of the game.

Sure, Baldwin has her reasons for supporting Clinton.

And certainly no one gets to Congress and remains there without getting a little dirty. That’s the nature of politics.

Not even the best are pure, and that means not Russ Feingold and not Tammy Baldwin, certainly two of the best.

But for Baldwin to countenance Clinton’s burn-down-the-house strategy that will leave the eventual Democratic nominee weakened by insulting and alienating core constituencies such as Blacks, young people, and progressives is indefensible.

Once someone threatens to burn down the house and defy the will of voters in their raw pursuit of power as Clinton is doing, this disdain for democracy and decency renders null and void all political contracts and obligations.

Next to the Constitution, Baldwin’s first obligation is to the will of her constituents, and she should remember this by voting for Obama in what may be the most important presidential election in generations.