Whether Hillary Clinton decides to keep fighting until the convention or not, today is likely to be an unpleasant day for the New York senator. If her win in Pennsylvania gave her a ticket to Indiana and North Carolina, Clinton’s showing yesterday may have given her a ticket home.
Clinton advisers acknowledged that the results of the primaries were far less than they had hoped, and said they were likely to face new pleas even from some of their own supporters for her to quit the race. They said they expected fund-raising to become even harder; one adviser said the campaign was essentially broke, and several others refused to say whether Mrs. Clinton had lent the campaign money from her personal account to keep it afloat.
The advisers said they were dispirited over the loss in North Carolina, after her campaign — now working off a shoestring budget as spending outpaces fund-raising — decided to allocate millions of dollars and full days of the candidate and her husband in the state.
It’s not a welcome scenario. Clinton — trailing by seemingly insurmountable margins in the race for delegates, votes, and states — now lacks resources and confidence. After a sizable victory in Pennsylvania, Clinton was able to turn to her contributors with a compelling case for a new infusion of cash. After Indiana and North Carolina, not so much.
North Carolina, in particular, appears to have been a major blow. Clinton had been raising expectations — she told voters as recently as Friday that the state would be a “game changer” — and the NYT noted that both she and the former president thought they could win the state.
One Clinton adviser called the North Carolina loss in particular “a very significant turning point” because Mrs. Clinton, the former president and some of their advisers had become so excited about their prospects of a surprise victory there. Instead Mr. Obama beat her there by about 15 percentage points.
What are we left with? Last night, campaign chairman Terry McAuliffe boasted about Clinton’s showing yesterday — he told reporters, “We shocked the world” — but no one seems to believe him. So what do they do now?
If her victory speech in Indiana was any indication, she’s not looking to shift gears at all.
Clinton’s giving a speech that is, by turns, churlish, reconciliatory, petulant, and above all, somewhat unfocused. […]
What surprised me about the speech, though, is that she didn’t do more to elevate her own prestige before the party. Whether she’s accepted a likely loss or is still hoping for an unexpected win, warm feelings from Obama’s sections of the party would help her path to the nomination or her reintegration into everyday politics. She’s got good speechwriters — Bill Clinton included — who could write her an elevating, healing address. But as of yet, they’ve not tried that approach. The thinking may be that she can give that speech at the convention, but I’m surprised that they’re not even trying that strategy. She’s too far behind, with too little time on the clock, to grind this victory out. Whether the strategy is to save face or actually change the math, it requires a speech considerably different than this one.
Clinton won’t offer a competing message this morning — she canceled her scheduled appearances on the morning shows. (Ben Smith noted that this a “sign of weakness,” but then again, she probably didn’t want to face a lot of questions about how soon she’d withdraw from the race.)
The strategy moving forward, at least for now, seems premised on two steps. The first is to take the fear factor surrounding Obama up a notch. Last night, Harold Ickes told Time magazine, “We don’t know enough about Senator Obama yet. We don’t need an October Surprise. And (the chance of) an October Surprise with Hillary is remote.” (It sounds like a variation on the “vetting” argument.)
The second is to move the goalposts again.
[I]n a sign of where the Clinton campaign is going, her aides are asserting that the winner will need 2,209 delegates, not 2,025. That higher number reflects the full inclusion of Florida and Michigan, which held their primaries before the date permitted by the Democratic Party. […]
“We’re going to argue that it’s going to take 2,209 to get to the magic number,” said Howard Wolfson, one of Mrs. Clinton’s chief strategists. “We’re going to argue that Florida and Michigan need to be seated full-strength.”
This is a very tough sell, not only because it would punish Obama for the decisions of states that broke the rules, but also because Clinton recently said, “I’ve won some, he’s won some. Each of us has to get to 2025 delegates.” It’s a little late to move the finish line.
By all indications, Clinton will not drop out today. Preemptively answering questions that hadn’t been asked, the campaign announced a new event in West Virginia this afternoon, underscoring the fact that nothing has changed, as far as the senator is concerned.
But Clinton also has some meetings today with party leaders and superdelegates, some of whom may share a message with her that changes her perspective.