Donna Braizle's Message on the Democratic Nomination

Donna Braizle, former campaign manager for Al Gore, is a super-delegate, Chair of the Democratic National Committee's Voting Rights Institute, and a CNN commentator. She is also a member of the Democratic Rules Committee that meets Saturday to determine the Michigan and Florida delegations (the states she refers to towards the end of this excerpt.) This is part of a statment that appears on her web site. (Hat tip to Jena's diary at Kos. ) I've added emphasis and paragraphing.

"It's time to rally around the nominee as soon as the fourth day of June breaks upon the horizon. Why not? What would Democrats gain by taking this debate any further, especially when the party is now engaged in the kind of polarizing politics that we once denounced the GOP for using for partisan gain. What can be won by tainting the process, arguing the rules are now unfair, or worse, the Republican rule of winner-takes-all should have guided the Democrats as well?

All this fuss is simply about saving face and waiting to see whether some awful thing tarnishes the presumptive nominee. It's shameful, short-sighted, mean-spirited and morally unacceptable. Now, I said it. To my longstanding friends in the feminist community who have called out the media as being culturally sexist and misogynistic, it is time to help educate the American public about the corrosive impact of sexism in politics and elsewhere. But we can have this dialogue without using divisive language and political tactics that further threaten to divide our country and party. If another woman comes up to me in an airport and suggests Obama should wait his turn, I might scream, "Stop it!" This is not about who should be first, it's about who has the most delegates and who might make the best president of the United States.

The most tragic thing I have heard is this need to link the Obama camp to pundits inside the media who have used the "math" historically used to call an election with attempts to push Hillary out of the race. After all, when the senator held a lead in every national poll in 2007, the media described her groundbreaking campaign as being inevitable. No one called that sexist.

Obama will have earned the right to become the declared Democratic nominee once he has reached the 2,026 delegates he needs. If the party decides to amend the just and known penalty it swore to impose on states and those officials that put its voters in jeopardy of not having a voice at the convention by violating the rules, the adjusted number should not alter the race. Instead, the amendment should allow the presumptive nominee to help bring the party together."