The “Uncommitted” Vote in the Primaries Means Nothing
The “Uncommitted” vote does not Portend the Existence of a Potent Arabist force we Must Kowtow to, and Media Reports to the Contrary Ignore History and Contemporary Politics.
by
David Gottfried
Supporters of the so-called “Palestinians” 1 are claiming that votes for “uncommitted” in the Presidential primaries reflect support for the Palestinians and a protest against Biden for allegedly being too supportive of Israel.
The glitzy and phony liberal media, evincing its desire to get on the bandwagon of another bogus “leftist” cause (I don’t know why murderous terrorists are reflexively canonized as leftist heroes), are inundating the airwaves with fanciful stories, about the uncommitted vote, designed to demoralize supporters of Israel and convince leftist Democrats to abandon Biden, thereby giving the White House to Il Duce Donald Trump. (And this is one of the ways the phony liberal media shows its allegiance to the Right. After all, Trump became what the mafia calls a “made man” in the Spring of 2016 when that abomination called CNN gave him 500 million dollars of free airtime.)
The BS talking heads have the gall to claim that the uncommitted vote is serious and substantial when it’s a meager 10 percent of the vote.
Survey American political history and you will find that most convention delegates were uncommitted and sometimes remained that way until the day ballots were cast. People voted for uncommitted delegates, and party leaders made delegates uncommitted, because once a commitment was tendered one’s leverage with a candidate was considerably lessened. By being uncommitted, one could bargain with different candidates for more goodies. In this electoral season, a vote for uncommitted may evince discontent with inflation, or unease with Biden’s age or any one of a number of factors wholly unrelated to the Mideast.
Also, the media would have us imagine that a 10 percent vote for uncommitted signifies a crippling schism or rift in the Democratic Party. Utter nonsense. When John Kennedy beat Hubert Humphrey, in the Wisconsin and West Virginia primaries in 1960, the vote was 40 something percent for Kennedy and 30 something percent for Humphrey. Nobody said that votes for Humphrey demonstrated that the Dems were hopelessly divided, and John F Kennedy was elected in the fall.
When Johnson ran for President in 1964, he lost the Michigan primary (Michigan had an open primary, and Republicans and Independents, desirous of embarrassing Johnson, voted for George Wallace), but no one said that the Dems were in tatters, and, in November, Johnson won 44 out of 50 states in the nation.
In 1972, when Richard Nixon sought re-election, he faced two Republican challengers, Ashbrook from the right and Mc Closkey from the Left. As usual, the right wing behaved like Joan Crawford on speed. In a debate, which Richard Nixon was too scared to participate in, Ashbrook expressed his ravenous rage by literally shaking a rubber rat on the stage, bemoaning the decadence and sickness of society. Nobody said that the Republicans were fatally rent by intra-party squabbles, and Nixon trounced George Mc Govern, the Democratic candidate.
When Jimmy Carter ran for President in 1976, he lost the Mass. primary to Henry “Scoop” Jackson, and he lost liberals to Mo Udall, and no one said that the Dems were fated to lose in November.
Through most of American history, plenty of Presidential candidates faced plenty of obstacles in the path to the nomination, but this was considered perfectly normal. It simply evinced the healthy, robust tendency of red-blooded Americans to express diverse political views. A conflict within a party did not mean that a party was doomed to die. For example, in the 1952 Republican convention, there was a spirited and sometimes furious debate between supporters of Eisenhower, who favored greater American involvement in the world, and Taft, who was an unreconstructed isolationist. Eisenhower won the debate, the nomination, and in the autumn clobbered Adlai Stevenson, the Democratic nominee. 2
Democrats, grow up. You don’t have to like your candidate. You’re not going to a dinner party with your candidate where you’ll have to suffer his smelly belches and farts. You have to support your candidate so the nation isn’t taken over by a man who is ruling and seducing America with blueprints laid down by Adolf Hitler in Mein Kampf. (In his first divorce trial, Trump’s wife testified that Trump kept a copy of Mein Kampf on the night stand next to his bed)
I put Palestinians in quotes because there never was a Palestinian nation, language or religion and that name was coined by the Romans to bury the memory of ancient Israel. Perhaps more significantly, when Gaza was ruled by Egypt, from 1948 to 1967, no one said that Egypt was trampling on the rights of Palestinians. Similarly, when the West Bank was ruled by Jordan from 1948 to 1967, no one said that Jordan was stifling Palestinian self-determination. The notion of Palestine is a poisonous concoction designed to delegitimize Israel. The so called Palestinians are Araba and as Arabs should be welcomed in other Arab countries. But their Arab brothers would rather cram them up against the borders of Israel and use them to score propoganda points.
The electoral map of 1952 underscores how radically different the political complexion of America has become. The only states that Stevenson got were situated in the Deep South. Today, the most fervent bastion of the GOP is the Deep South.