In her speech on Tuesday night, Hillary Clinton told supporters she would take some time to consult with her advisors and party leaders in order to determine “how to move forward.” Apparently, Clinton wanted to take a moment to take the party’s temperature — hear from her allies on the Hill, gauge the level of interest in a prolonged fight, and get a sense of what kind of support Clinton could expect if she delayed a withdrawal from the race.
What Clinton heard seems to have convinced her to end the campaign, endorse Barack Obama, and bring a close to the longest, closest presidential primary fight in American history.
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton will endorse Senator Barack Obama on Saturday, bringing a close to her 17-month campaign for the White House, aides said. Her decision came after Democrats urged her Wednesday to leave the race and allow the party to coalesce around Mr. Obama.
Howard Wolfson, one of Mrs. Clinton’s chief strategists, and other aides said she would express support for Mr. Obama and party unity at an event in Washington that day. One adviser said Mrs. Clinton would concede defeat, congratulate Mr. Obama and proclaim him the party’s nominee, while pledging to do what was needed to assure his victory in November.
Her decision came after a day of conversations with supporters on Capitol Hill about her future now that Mr. Obama had clinched the nomination. Mrs. Clinton had, in a speech after Tuesday night’s primaries, suggested she wanted to wait before deciding about her future, but in conversations Wednesday, her aides said, she was urged to step aside.
“We pledged to support her to the end,” Representative Charles B. Rangel, a New York Democrat who has been a patron of Mrs. Clinton since she first ran for the Senate, said in an interview. “Our problem is not being able to determine when the hell the end is.”
The event was originally scheduled for Friday, but was pushed back a day to accommodate more supporters who wanted to attend. The announcement came shortly after Clinton’s staff was told that Friday was their last day. (The campaign also sent an email to supporters late yesterday afternoon, which TPM posted in full.)
In terms of the practical details, Clinton will apparently suspend her campaign, not drop out entirely. She’ll hold onto her delegates, and will continue to keep an operation in place for fundraising, in order to help pay off a rather massive debt.
As for the already-overwhelming talk about Clinton’s chances of making Obama’s ticket, the WaPo report suggested it’s unlikely, not because of any lingering animosity between the candidates themselves, but because of the inherent problem with the former president sticking around.
[I]nside Obama’s campaign, there is a distinct coolness to the idea of adding Clinton to ticket, in part because of the complication of determining the role for former president Bill Clinton. […]
Rep. Artur Davis (D-Ala.), an Obama adviser, offered several names to the list of potential vice presidential choices, including those of former Florida governor and senator Bob Graham; Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana, a top Clinton supporter; and Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, an Obama supporter who could assuage the disappointment of women who wanted the chance to vote for the first female president.
“Senator Clinton is a candidate for the vice presidency, and she should be a candidate for vice presidency,” Davis said. But he added that Obama is under no more obligation to choose her than Al Gore was to pick runner-up Bill Bradley in 2000, Bill Clinton was to pick Paul Tsongas in 1992 or Michael S. Dukakis was to pick Jesse L. Jackson in 1988.
“There is no particular tradition in the modern era of the victor picking the second place finisher,” Davis said.
Several other prominent Democrats on both sides of the divide panned the idea of adding Clinton to the ticket. Former president Jimmy Carter, an Obama supporter, told the Guardian, a British newspaper, that naming Clinton “would be the worst mistake that could be made” and “would just accumulate the negative aspects of both candidates.” Even Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, one of Clinton’s top supporters, knocked down the concept. “There’s no bargaining,” Rendell told NY1 television. “You don’t bargain with the presidential nominee. Even if you’re Hillary Clinton and you have 18 million votes, you don’t bargain.”
Both Rendell and Johnson noted that a joint ticket would require the Obama campaign to put strict boundaries on the role the former president would play in the fall campaign.
There’s some talk that an expedited process would help the Obama campaign tamp down an organized effort to push Clinton onto the ticket, but it’s more likely Obama will do the opposite, going with a lengthy, methodical process, which will allow passions to cool down and give time for a thorough search.
As for Saturday, it appears we’ll hear the gracious, classy, unifying words this weekend that many expected to hear on Tuesday night. The light at the end of the tunnel, thankfully, does not appear to be a train.