CHEATER

CHEATER 

Hillary Clinton just lost my vote. 

Mrs. Clinton went to Florida last night to celebrate a victory that wasn't. More importantly, she went to Florida last night to proclaim a victory that she had no right to proclaim and should be embarrassed to assert. But that didn't stop her. 

Hillary is a cheater, pure and simple. I grew up on the streets and neighborhoods of Brooklyn. Cheating was not tolerated, not even by six year olds. We had no umpires or referees in our choose up stickball, punchball and touch football games. So if you were out on a close play at second or clearly caught a pass out of bounds (which was the sidewalk), you admitted it. Maybe, just to save a little face, you argued the call a bit or on a close play sought a second opinion from the shortstop (especially if he was your best friend, or better, a relative). But you didn't just stand on second base and assert your claim oblvious to the rules we had all agreed upon. You didn't try to move the line of scrimmage up to the place where you caught the out of bounds pass. 

But that's not Hillary. The rules for her apparently changed last Tuesday when Obama walloped her in the South Carolina primary. Desperation set in. She had to find a venue for victory to erase the sting of defeat. And she had to do it before Super Tuesday. So she chose Florida's faux primary and then imported an ersatz crowd to a ballroom off the interstate for a pseudo-victory speech. 

Although Hillary's face was straight, that was all that was straight about her performance last night. Months ago, she and the other Democratic candidates agreed not to campaign in Florida after that state changed its scheduled primary election date in violation of the calendar set by the Democratic National Committee and agreed to by all the candidates. Because of this conduct, none of Florida's would be delegates will be counted in the presidential balloting at the national convention this coming summer in Denver. Thus, the voting that occurred yesterday was for naught. Not a single delegate was chosen. There also was no campaign in Florida. No direct mail, no stump speeches, no debates, no rallies. No CNN, MSNBC, Fox, media hordes or other media big feet. And no delegates, the coin of the realm in nominating presidential candidates. Hell, the best evidence that there was absolutely no campaign in Florida is that Bill Clinton -- a human GPS when it comes to injecting himself into one of his wife's political contests -- was never anywhere near the place. 

But Hillary appeared last night anyway, a sort of political Caesar crossing an ethical Rubicon. She claimed that she was not violating the rules because she showed up after the election had ended and thus had not "campaigned" in the state in violation of her agreement not to do so. So what? The point is not that she showed up at a rally in Florida. It's that she claims to have won a contest that never existed and that she promised not to undertake. It's also that she now plans to have Florida delegates seated at the Democratic National Convention, presumably to vote for her. If she thinks either of those boneheaded plays do not amount to a broken promise, maybe it's because she is being advised by the master hairsplitter himself, the conjugator-in-chief. 

Given the obvious backdrop of dishonesty, Hillary's "victory" rally was itself a flop. The crowd was bussed in. The speech was flat. Even her thank you didn't cut it, probably because, as one voter remarked after the fact, the "vote" might well have come out differently had there been a real election campaign. She touts her four victories to date as evidence of strength going into next week's "national" primary. But two of them, Michigan and now Florida, were in contests that didn't count against either no-shows (in Florida) or uncommitted (in Michigan). Her answer to the politics of hope is the politics of hype. 

Unfortunately, however, the fact that Hillary struck out last night is only part of her problem, and the far less important part. On the streets of my youth, cheaters suffered a fate worse than death. 

They never got another game.