Dem nomination process degrades into immaturity

I’ve been disappointed and stunned during the last couple of weeks to see the Democratic Party’s presidential nominating process degrade into a disgraceful display of immaturity.

After all, we’re talking about electing a commander-in-chief, not a middle-school student-body president.

Cheap shots and negative attacks have come to define the Democratic Party’s nominating process – a contest that had been previously characterized by the fact that the talent pool was so deep that even experienced candidates like Bill Richardson and Joe Biden couldn’t compete.

A few examples:

• During a nasty exchange between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton at last week’s debate, Obama said he was working as a community organizer and watching American jobs go oversees while Clinton was “a corporate lawyer sitting on the board at Wal Mart,” implying he has worked to help Americans who were losing their jobs while Clinton was involved in moving jobs to other countries.

• Clinton shot back during the same exchange, saying she was fighting against Republicans while Obama was a lawyer representing a campaign contributor’s “slum landlord business in inner-city Chicago,” implying that Obama has helped the rich take advantage of the poor while she fought against that.

• Bill Clinton, acting as a representative of his wife’s campaign, dismissed Obama’s huge win in South Carolina this weekend by saying Jesse Jackson won that state’s primaries in 1984 and 1988.

After a week of racially charged campaigning he helped set off, that was Bill Clinton’s parting thought? Of course, he’ll say, he didn’t mean it as a racial jab. It’s just coincidence that Obama is black and Jackson is black and South Carolina has a huge black population, of which 80 percent voted for Obama.

But let’s be honest. It was a cheap shot and a racial jab from a former president of the United States, a man who this nation has entrusted with its economy, its relations with other nations and its nuclear arsenal.

So we have a former president and the most credible female and black presidential candidates in history acting like 12-year-old boys on a school playground, thumping their chests and tossing insults at each other.

The nastiness is coloring nearly every statement from either campaign that’s related to the other campaign.

Why do politics bring out the worst in people? Clinton and Obama have been inspiring record levels of participation in the early presidential nominating contests. Interest in both campaigns has dwarfed that of any of the Republican candidates. The nastiness is counterproductive.

Now they’re competing for New Mexico, whose Democrats will choose between Clinton, Obama and John Edwards on Tuesday. The nastiness that put a stranglehold on South Carolina has already reached the Land of Enchantment.

Though both campaigns say they’re only defending themselves to ensure the campaign remains focused on the issues, this is no longer about the issues. It has degraded into the sort of garbage that discourages people from voting. Both campaigns are attacking the other at a furious pace while continually blaming the other campaign for the attacks.

That’s called hypocrisy. Both say the other started the fighting. Either candidate could be the first to put the guns down. Neither is doing it.

In the meantime, we have two candidates arguing that they have the wisdom and experience to bring the change this nation needs. Neither is displaying the maturity to convince me.

A version of this article was published today on the Diary of a Mad Voter blog published by the Denver Post’s Politics West and the independent Web site NewWest.net.