March 2, 2016--Hillary Clinton's Red State Strategy

What do the following states have in common--

Texas, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, Arkansas?

Now add South Carolina to the list.

Three things at least--

The first group of states participated yesterday in Super Tuesday caucuses and primaries. And South Carolina held its Republican primary just three days ago.

Hillary Clinton won all of these states by wide margins, which essentially means that she will be the Democratic nominee for the presidency.

But, all eight of these states are so-called Red States, which means that for decades as well as for this November, there is virtually no possibility that any Democrat, much less Hillary Clinton, running against Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, or Marco Rubio, will carry any of them. They represent the new Republican Solid South.

Why then did the Democratic National Committee agree to allow these very conservative, solidly Republican states to determine who would be the Democratic nominee?

I would be tempted to say that this is because the DNC, under the manipulated leadership of Debbie Wasserman Schultz--my Snowbird Florida congressperson and fervent supporter of Clinton's---did everything she could to rig the outcome of the Democratic selection process.

She and the DNC, knowing that these states, though they for decades have wound up safely in the GOP column in national elections, in Democratic primaries, because in some states more than half of registered Democrats are African American, they predictably wind up solidly behind Hillary Clinton.

For example, in South Carolina last weekend, where about 60 percent of registered Democrats are black, Hillary Clinton garnered more than 90 percent of their votes. Enough to help her carry the state by 50 percentage points. In this, she did even better than Barack Obama in 2008.

I would be tempted to say that Wasserman Schultz arranged the primary schedule to manipulate this outcome, but that would be more than stretching the truth because since Super Tuesday came into existence in 1976, the primary schedule has been pretty much structured as it currently is.

In effect this means that the Democrats appear to be willing to allow Red States to play an inordinate role in determining their nominees. More specifically, to have African-American voters have a disproportionate say.

There is much to complain about how black people still face discrimination but, in this important case, they are more than fully empowered.