Just this morning, it started to look to me as if the Democratic floodgates were beginning to crack, in earnest, for the first time. Bob Casey, who had professed neutrality, backed Obama. Howard Dean started publicly expressing his overwhelming patience with the status quo, and then Chris Dodd did the same thing, urging the party to get behind Obama. Pat Leahy, with surprising bluntness, called on Clinton to end the contest.
Spread out over a couple of weeks, these developments may not look like much, but when all of these instances occur in one morning, one starts to get the sense that the Democratic establishment not only wants to see the nominating race come to an end, but are prepared to help make that happen.
Given this, it’s hard not to imagine what Hillary Clinton is thinking. Sure, when asked, she offers nothing but confidence and upbeat assessments about the state of the race, but in her heart of hearts, she surely recognizes the very long odds she faces.
In an interesting new report in Time, Mark Halperin and James Carney explain that Clinton is well aware of reality, but feels the need to keep fighting.
Clinton believes Obama’s support is largely a mirage — a bunch of true believers whose passion might help him cinch the nomination, but that may prove an insufficient bedrock for winning a general election when the spell might be broken by tough questions about national-security credentials, economic-policy plans and rich experience. She can’t stop from shaking her head in disbelief when longtime friends who are elected officials inform her that they are going to endorse Obama and were chiefly convinced by their children’s enthusiasm for his candidacy.
But this argument has taken a hit in recent weeks as Clinton has found herself on the defensive about her experience as First Lady. On a variety of domestic and international issues, information has emerged that calls into question the extent of Clinton’s policy involvement in the 1990s. And she was recently embarrassed by revelations that a 1996 trip to Bosnia was far less dangerous and dramatic than in her campaign-stump retelling.
That leaves the strategy Clinton is turning to more frequently — trying to define Obama on her terms. According to those close to her, she is hoping that as spring becomes summer, the potential for finding another skeleton or two in Obama’s closet will prove him ultimately unelectable in the fall.
The article added, “When Clinton closes her eyes, she sees John McCain triumphing in November against Obama in a contest she believes she would win.”
This isn’t especially surprising.
First, it helps explain Clinton’s motivation facing hurdles she likely can’t clear. The assumption in some circles has been malicious motives — Jonathan Chait argued this week that Clinton is “acting as if she doesn’t care about the Democratic Party’s interests at all, except insofar as they coincide with her own.”
But the Clinton perspective reflected in the Time article is in line with what I suggested the other day. Clinton really believes Obama would lose, so in order to protect the party’s interests, she has to keep fighting. (I happen to think Clinton is mistaken in this assumption, but I don’t doubt her sincerity on the point.) In this sense, as far as Clinton is concerned, her interests and the party’s interests are one and the same.
Which leads me to the second point: every presidential candidate in a tough primary closes his or her eyes, sees the other side winning, and feels the need to fight on for the good of the party and the country. This isn’t unusual; it’s the norm. The difference is, we don’t usually have a one-on-one contest that will remain technically unsettled by the time all the primaries and caucuses are over.
Indeed, it’s the inevitable byproduct of a campaign bubble. Clinton believes she has to stay in for the good of the party, she’s surrounded by aides who believe the same thing, and she goes to rallies surrounded by supporters who offer responses like this one:
Before presenting her economic plan at a rally [in Mishawaka, Ind.] today, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton opened with a piece of political commentary: “There are some people who are saying, you know, we really ought to end this primary, we just ought to shut it down.”
“No!” boomed the crowd, which filled every seat in a cavernous high school gymnasium.
The next question, though, is figuring out just how much say Clinton will have in the matter. She told her supporters that there are “some people” who want to end the process. She’s right; there are. But if “some people” becomes “most of the party,” and the floodgates really do burst, what Clinton imagines when she “closes her eyes” won’t make any difference.