So much for a soft landing

May 14, 2008

Following up on the last item, by any realistic measure, Hillary Clinton’s landslide victory in West Virginia, while impressive, has not changed any of the metrics of the Democratic race. Barack Obama currently leads in pledged delegates, superdelegates, popular votes, states won, fundraising, and poll numbers. Clinton won big in a state where she was expected to win big, but when it comes to the enormous deficit she’s facing, last night’s gains barely dented Obama’s lead.

Given this, there’s been considerable talk over the last week about how Clinton might best position herself for the inevitable. How graceful will the exit be? How can she best help the party prepare for the general election? Can she end her campaign in such a way as to improve her stature and gain clout for the future?

Last night, it seemed as if Hillary Clinton wasn’t considering any of those questions.

Hoping to build up excitement about her victory speech in West Virginia, campaign chairman Terry McAuliffe told MSNBC last night that we would hear “one of the greatest speeches … ever given.”

Campaign hyperbole notwithstanding, Clinton’s pitch in Charleston suggested she’s going to do everything possible to drag this process out as long as she can.

She started with a fundraising pitch…

“Now, tonight, tonight, I need your help to continue this journey. We are in the homestretch. There are only three weeks left in the final contests. And your support can make the difference between winning and losing. So I hope you’ll go to HillaryClinton.com and support our campaign.”

…and then moved the goalposts…

“[T]his race isn’t over yet. Neither of us has the total delegates it takes to win. And both Senator Obama and I believe that the delegates from Florida and Michigan should be seated. I believe we should honor the votes cast by 2.3 million people in those states and seat all of their delegates. Under the rules of our party, when you include all 50 states, the number of delegates needed to win is 2,209, and neither of us has reached that threshold yet.”

…and then went after Obama on electability.

“I deeply admire Senator Obama, but I believe our case — a case West Virginia has helped to make — our case is stronger. Together, we have won millions and millions of votes. By the time tonight is over, probably 17 million, close to it.”

These are not the words of a candidate looking for a soft landing.

Whether Clinton’s pitch is compelling or not, it’s worth taking a moment to consider precisely the kind of odds she’s up against. In addition to trailing in every metric, Clinton does not have a realistic road to the nomination.

Unless Clinton can get the delegates from Florida and Michigan seated in her favor — a big longshot — she must reverse the math by convincing more than 70 percent of the remaining superdelegates to initiate Party Armageddon by denying Obama the nomination.

Here’s another number to keep in mind:

The pro-Obama Jed Report now calculates that Hillary would need to pick up a ludicrous 93 percent of the remaining available delegates, assuming the self-declared “Pelosi Club” superdelegates who have said they will back the pledged delegate winner stick to that promise.

We’ve reached the point at which Dana Milbank is comparing the Clinton campaign directly to the legendary “Dead Parrot” sketch from Monty Python. (He could have just as easily pointed to the Black Knight or the “bring out your dead” scenes from “Holy Grail.”)

Clinton’s decision to ignore the landscape and keep fighting isn’t helping. It’s not helping her; it’s not helping the party.

In my heart of hearts, I genuinely don’t believe Clinton is on some kind of vanity exercise, or trying to sabotage Obama. My sense is that Clinton is absolutely convinced that she can win in November and Obama can’t, and that by staying in, she might convince others to feel the same way. Clinton, in other words, believes she should save the party from itself.

If uncommitted superdelegates disagree, they can end the contest today.

May 14, 2008 at 9:08 am

Dunno, CB. I don’t rule out a soft landing from that speech. Other than saying she thinks she is more electable than Obama (she has to say something until she withdraws, right?) she really didn’t seem to go after him much. The fundraising pitch could actually be consistent with wanting out — use her win to rally donors and get her debts paid down before dropping out.

But for me the big hint was the heartstrings story. A woman candidate running way behind tells an anecdote about a woman voter who. . . dies? Yikes. What kind of analogy does that naturally set up?

Everyone seems to have accepted that this goes through KY/OR on the 20th. At that point, June 3 is not far away, and gives “everyone” a chance to vote. If enough Supers move by then, Obama is quite safe and can even afford to do a deal on FL and MI without harm.

I really think she either pulls after the 20th or runs out the few remaining states on principle but takes the softer “Huckabee Approach.” I don’t think last night was necessarily inconsistent with those options.

“Clinton, in other words, believes she should save the party from itself.”

Whatever she believes, it arises out of some sort of mental defect. She’s delusional, and as a result, I wouldn’t vote for her to be the town dog catcher.

Are there no blue-collar, white-working class people in Iowa, Maryland, Virginia, Vermont, Kansas, Washington, Delaware, and the 30+ states that Barack won?

Or, in these 30+ states that Barack won, are there only high-class, surburbanite people of leisure, college graduates and African-Americans?

And, is that what Someone wants us to believe — that in the 30+ states Barack has won, that there are no blue-collar, white-working class people in any of those states? I thought that white people were a majority in America, not a minority. I don’t think we should allow ourselves to be Fooled Again because the more They make this about Race, the more it will become about Race and undo the Unity that Barack invisions and hopes and has always hoped to achieve!

Barack Obama is the type of figure a political party dreams of, the type of person they can rebuild the party around for years. Hillary Clinton (if she is on a campaign of personal destruction) is comitting career suicide. She isn’t the future of the Democratic Party and her divisive politics isn’t the direction they want to go in. She’s comitting career suicide. If she is seen as being responsible for damaging and destroying the Democrats in the fall election she will find herself a pariah.

Obama will have the majority of pledged delegates locked up next week. He got two more super delegates, and I have a feeling we will see another handfull come out for him this week to counter West Virginia. After June 3rd. he’ll have the nomination locked up. Obama vs McCain has already begun and after June 3rd. it kicks into high gear. The public and the media will be focused on that. If Clinton persists after June 3rd. she will be viewed as vindictive, self-obssessed and delusional by all but her most rabid followers.

The anecdote about the woman dying was bad, but the one about the little boy who sold his video games and his bike to donate to her campaign was awful.

You’re sitting on $80 million in personal fortune, Hillary. Maybe you don’t need to ask a kid to give up everything to help your dying cause.

“Together, we have won millions and millions of votes”

Wow. What great words, what raw emotion. Terry Mac was right, one of the greatest speeches in human history.

I think Clinton does believe she’s the only one who can win in November and sees herself as altruistically trying to save the party from itself. (In 1974, Nixon felt the same way, BTW–that by resigning he’d be depriving the U.S. of its only capable chief of state.)

However, I also think she knows it’s over. At this point, she’s just fundraising for her campaign debts. And you don’t raise money by telling people–at least, not the smaller donors she’s targeting right now–that they’ll be paying off the debt you racked up; you raise it by vowing to fight to the very last moment.

You keep expecting Clinton to pull out of the race. That isn’t happening. The majority of Democratic voters want her to stay in (based on polling). Staying in while talking like someone who has quit isn’t compatible with that, so why do you expect it? Clinton is the choice of the party if it decide Obama is unelectable. She is running so close to Obama that it is nearly a tie. The advantage for Obama comes largely from crossover and Independent votes in traditionally red states. Beyond that, they are tied. Why is that so hard to understand?

Despite all the complaints about how Clinton minimizes any Obama victory (jokes about which states don’t count), I’ve seen nothing but that kind of talk about Clinton’s overwhelming victory yesterday. Obama cannot be the runaway frontrunner you all want him to be while Clinton racks up that kind of victory. We all know you don’t want WV and KY to count as states — bunch of racist hillbillies there — but they do count.

It is untenable for the party to give this nomination to Obama on the basis of a screwup over MI and FL. THAT is why this isn’t over. No huge groundswell or rallying around a presumptive nominee has occurred, despite the media hype and the claims of Obama supporters. That leaves the party exactly where it has been until now — with a tie. There needs to be a fair and equitable tiebreaker. I hope the convention will do that, because there needs to be a solution that both sides can accept. The continued attempts to elbow Clinton out of the race aren’t doing the job.

okay. so she doesn’t want a soft landing. so she lands on her ass really hard. makes no difference to me.

I agree with Mark Pencil at #1: didn’t sound very rough and tumble to me, since she stayed positive about herself rather than going negative on BO. “I’m more electable” is a favorable comparison, of course, but it’s hardly “the other guy sucks”. Sounds to me like she’s changed her tune, to her credit. Put me in the “I’m cool with her candidacy so long as she stays positive about herself and doesn’t attack” camp. Her speech struck me as in that spirit.

For McCain to beat Hillary in a general election in WV, all he would have to do is tell them that she wants to make it mandatory that people buy health insurance.

Mary:

“You keep expecting Clinton to pull out of the race. That isn’t happening. The majority of Democratic voters want her to stay in (based on polling). Staying in while talking like someone who has quit isn’t compatible with that, so why do you expect it? Clinton is the choice of the party if it decide Obama is unelectable. She is running so close to Obama that it is nearly a tie. The advantage for Obama comes largely from crossover and Independent votes in traditionally red states. Beyond that, they are tied. Why is that so hard to understand?”

I think it’s fine for Clinton to keep it going until the finish line as long as she has the support and the money.

The problem is, unlike Huckabee, she doesn’t have the money. She’s spending money that isn’t there in her quixotic campaign. Her funding has dried up. To continue to deficit spend like this is irresponsible. What will it look like if Obama supporters have to pay her debts?

Secondly, she’s being caustic. It seems every other day she makes some kind of hullabaloo-inducing statement. The latest obviously was her gab about “hard-working americans, white americans”. To be fair, I think this is more caused by mistakes and bad advice than true malevolence on her part – if it were malevolence she could be 10 times as bad. Still, it’s not being helpful.

“Despite all the complaints about how Clinton minimizes any Obama victory (jokes about which states don’t count), I’ve seen nothing but that kind of talk about Clinton’s overwhelming victory yesterday. Obama cannot be the runaway frontrunner you all want him to be while Clinton racks up that kind of victory. We all know you don’t want WV and KY to count as states — bunch of racist hillbillies there — but they do count.”

I agree. I don’t like to play the expectations game or spin results as not mattering. A win is a win, and grats to Hillary for taking WV.

Yeah, that kind of victory has been unheard of in this primary campaign. From TPM:

State – Obama – Hillary
Idaho 82.2% 17.8%
Hawaii 76.2% 23.8%
District of Columbia 75.8% 24.2%
Alaska 74.6% 25.4%
Kansas 74.2% 25.8%
Washington 68.4% 31.6%
Georgia 68.1% 31.9%
South Carolina 67.6% 32.4%
Minnesota 67.4% 32.6%
Colorado 67.3% 32.7%
Illinois 66.3% 33.7%
Virginia 64.2% 35.8%
North Dakota 62.6% 37.4%
Mississippi 62.2% 37.8%
Maryland 61.9% 38.1%
Wyoming 61.9% 38.1%
Louisiana 61.7% 38.3%
Vermont 60.6% 39.4%

Wow, Hillary racked up the 12th biggest win of the campaign! In a state with a whopping five electoral votes! What a game changer!

re: “it’s a tie”. No. It is very, very close. But not a tie. Horeshoes and handgrenades, but not elections.

re: MI and FL. The rules were set in advance and all parties agreed to them and all parties chose their strategies based on them. But now, near the end of the game, we’re supposed to change them? And doing so *would* be tenable? It’s a curious world one has to live in to think that. This issue, by the way, is a totally separate question from what the rules *should* be. Caucuses and superdelegates, for example, look pretty nutty to me. I sympathize with Clinton supporters over the non-ideal nature of the nomination process, but right now it is what it is. I’ll be first in line to support modifying them for future primaries.

I’ve seen nothing but that kind of talk about Clinton’s overwhelming victory yesterday.

Then you’ve been ignoring the many of us who congratulated Senator Clinton on her win. But then your blinders are permanently adjusted to the maximum victimhood setting.

Provided she can keep it clean, Hillary needs to say in through the last primary, otherwise the dead-enders like Mary will whine that Hillary’s great victory was “stolen.” The key to Obama’s winning in November lies in winning the nomination with no doubt to the legitimacy of the process.

And Obama fans, like myself, need to give credit where it is due. A win is a win, even if it’s done by appeasing to the racist tendencies of Appalachia. For us to ignore W.Va. and Ky. is to stoop to Hillary’s level. We’ve argued all along that ALL states count. Now is not the time to abandon that high-minded position.

Besides, isn’t it fun to watch Mary conveniently coopt the position that a month ago she was deriding?

Hi Maria.

I’m telling you, it’s The Terminator. Everyone wants a T2 ending, where the good Terminator sacrifices herself in the smelting pot for the good of humanity, but the only way this one ends is with a hydraulic press.

Now that 2/3rds of the Democrats have come forward to say that they want Hillary to run as Vice President, we can safely conclude that she’s done and that Obama can safely put a fork in her. Hillary certainly doesn’t want that spot, but Obama clearly needs to seriously consider the possibility of running a woman in the VP spot. The problem there though is that any other woman than Hillary will look like a cheap shot at replacing her, so Obama’s got a real problem now which he will probably eventually deal with in a satisfactory manner.

Besides, after that which happened to Vince Foster, Obama can’t afford to take the chance to put Hillary on the ticket.

I do believe that the Obama’s defeat in West Virginia is rather humiliating given that he is the front runner,but that does not mean that HRC should be made the nominee, after all she is behind in every metric. I know many people who are agaisnt the idea of a unity ticket but I really think there needs to be one.

Hi, Joe. Do we know each other? I’m awful with names so no offense meant.

Provided she can keep it clean, Hillary needs to say in through the last primary, otherwise the dead-enders like Mary will whine that Hillary’s great victory was “stolen.”

We would be well advised not to waste any effort on true dead-enders like Mary and instead concentrate on the many, many Clinton supporters who want a Democrat in the White House and believe in progressive principles and policies. It really is a question of diminishing returns; you can’t squander time trying to convince the wholly irrational of anything.

Fortunately, those people are a distinct minority whose voices are magnified on blogs. In meatspace, lots of people are het up right now about their respective candidates, but most will calm down and unite against McCain, albeit often grudgingly, for the general.

Mark Pencil,

I wish you were right, but I find it a bit hard to believe that she’d be pushing the 2,209 number if she didn’t actually intend to keep going. You’re right that she obviously has to keep up appearances even if she secretly plans to drop out soon, but hawking that kind of nonsense is the mark of a candidate who genuinely (and delusionally) intends to take this to the bitter end.

I see Obama got two new supers (one and a half, actually–one is Democrats Abroad) this morning. Nothing for Clinton yet.

Obama also nailed two more last night. So that’s 4-0 Obama since Steve did yesterday’s campaign update.

JRD, I think she’s pushing the 2,209 number (which, of course, flatly contradicts her and her surrogates’ many statements affirming the 2,025 bar–are they not even slightly embarrassed to keep moving the goalposts like this?) for the benefit of the DNC rules & bylaws committee, which is meeting May 31.

That committee is not about to give her Michigan and Florida as is, so it’s an exercise in making a lot of noise hoping that something good will come her way out of it. And again, it’s probably a delaying tactic so she can fundraise. And she probably feels she’s keeping her options open, ignoring the fact that she has no options now that will change the result of the race.

Now I am thread hogging, so I will step back and go shushie.

LOL @ Memekiller #18.

Clinton is definitely more Black Knight than Dead Parrot. After all, the sketch wasn’t about convincing the parrot it was dead.

Unlike Mary A. #2, I don’t think Clinton is delusional. More likely, she’s extremely committed to deliver for her donors. They didn’t pay for a loser.

Maria

And you don’t raise money by telling people–at least, not the smaller donors she’s targeting right now–that they’ll be paying off the debt you racked up; you raise it by vowing to fight to the very last moment.

And, to add to what she won’t tell people, fighting to the very last moment racks up even more debt that she’ll want others to pay off. I feel for those vendors in WV and in states with remaining primaries if Hillary “purchases” any of their services — they’re pretty certain to get stiffed because Hillary won’t have voters showering her with money. Losers never do.

=====

Right now, it’s hard to imagine a campaign without Hillary in it, bragging and anklebiting her opponent for the nomination, but when campaigning for the presidency begins in earnest, American voters will be given an opportunity to evaluate Obama and McCain, both as personalities and policymakers. Hillary will be a memory in the same way the other candidates are now, and we’ll be facing what John McCain actually represents and intends for America. His close association with Bush and his confusion about the economy are his greatest weaknesses. (Yesterday Bush astonishingly praised himself, telling reporters he sacrificed golf for those who were dying in Iraq. The man is SICK.)

IOW, by the time November rolls around, we’ll have the actual choice staring us in the face, and the decision will be America’s, not a decision belonging to any one small group, disgruntled or not.

#25: I donno. The dead parrot sketch was about convincing the store owner that the parrot he sold was dead. Now we’re trying to convince the Clintonites that the campaign they’re selling is dead.

So yeah, I can see the analogy.

I understand that a large portion of Democrats want Hillary to stay in the race, but given her near impossible chances of winning, I don’t see how this helps the party in any meaningful way.

This protracted and occasionally bitter contest only benefits one person: John McCain . . .

Depends on who or what the parrot is, Shade Tail.

Strange how that’s a persistent theme in Python sketches. I bet Clinton herself feels like she’s in the “Bring out your dead!” bit, with Obama wielding Eric Idle’s mallet.

Clinton keeps going because she still believes she should win and she’s right, she should have won. But a lousy campaign strategy and myopic vision of how things will play out left her high and dry even before Super Tuesday. She may blame Obama and the voters for not getting her into the Whitehouse but the rsponsibility falls fully in her lap – she just didn’t get it done despite all the advantages she had and I don’t think she will ever acknowledge or come to terms with that. So how can she quit now?

Looks like everyone missed the last line of her speech:

And I will work my heart out for the nominee of the Democratic Party to make sure we have a Democratic president.

Does that sound like someone who is seriously “in it to win it”???

Note also that she isn’t directly attacking Obama anymore and saved her strongest words while campaigning for Bush. I admit it’s like reading the Kremlin tea leaves 30 years ago, but she is coming around. Slowly, perhaps too slowly, but she’s going to be gone on June 3rd, which is 20 days from now.

If she wants to make a fool of herself for 20 days, the least we can all do is not stare. It’s becoming unseemly.

Remember that Sun-Tzu says that the most important part of winning a battle is to leave the opponent a line of honorable retreat. I think it’s clear that the Obama campaign is doing that.

Every candidate promises to stay till the convention… till they withdraw. Standard operating procedure.

What this win does is resurrect hopes…. and loosens the fundraising spigot some. Till the 20th.

I believe she’s retiring campaign debt. And that Oregon – which will confound the CW as a majority of whites in a very white state will back Obama – will provoke a superdelegate rush that puts Obama above 2000 delegates. Eight days from now, the math will dry up her efforts to reduce her campaign debt. That’s when the likelihood of her withdrawal will near 100%.

…she still believes she should win and she’s right, she should have won…

Hillary Clinton and her supporters will never understand that many, many, many people just plain don’t like her. Period. Has nothing to do with misogyny or even ability or experience.

Her husband also totally destroyed all of his vast support in the Democratic party, and that’s really sad.

I don’t believe the “overwhelming” victory in West Virginia should be any kind of marker. I think the point spread would have been much narrower if Senator Obama had actually done more campaigning. He seems to close the gap in state in which Senator Clinton is expected to win.

Being from Michigan, I don’t feel disenfranchised. I knew my vote wasn’t going to “count” when I voted uncommitted (Edwards supporter). As long as my vote counts in November, I pretty much could live with either Hillary or Obama. I don’t want to see Senator McCain win just because the Hillary and Obama camps can’t come together. If we can’t, we’ll deserve to have a third Bush term.

At this point, Hillary can’t win even if she were to get what she wants from the Michigan and Florida primaries. I don’t think it is fair of her to use this argument. Back in October she expressed clearly that Michigan didn’t count. Now she wants it to count. If she wanted Michigan and Florida voters to be enfranchised, she (and the other Democratic candidates) should have fought this “civil rights” issue before the primary. It is to benefit her, not the voters of either state.

While you all can spin it whichever way you’d like, I’d prefer to look at this realistically. Clinton continuing in this race will NOT, any longer, make Obama a stronger candidate or make our party stronger. That time has passed AND DAMAGE IS BEGINNING TO OCCUR. She will continue to weaken Obama and our party if she is allowed to continue another 6 weeks or so. And we will have fewer and fewer Clinton people and others who will, vote for the Dems in the fall.

The supers are delusional if they think allowing this contest to continue is a good thing for the party. It WAS a good thing, but is no longer. Obama needs to focus on the fall election NOW and begin to heal the party and bring a winning coalition together…..starting now….not in 6 weeks with the party and candidate weakened further/ PLEASE MOVE, SUPERS!

Jacklyn from MI,

I agree that she can’t win (barring some totally unforseen skeleton in Obama’s closet), and that FL and MI won’t change the outcome, but there are a lot of people who have bought the FL and MI must count meme hook, line and sinker. My guess is that once the voting is done and the nominee is clear, then some compromise deal will be struck to seat FL and MI. There will be some symbolic penalty for violating the rules, but they will be seated in order to placate the people who bought the meme.

“Clinton keeps going because she still believes she should win and she’s right, she should have won.”

Maybe four years ago, but time has kind of passed her by. We went through 8 poisonous years of the Clinton administration (and Mr. & Mrs. Clinton we every bit as responsible as their enemies) then directly into the rancorous and disastrous double term of George Bush. People are ready to move on and move away. Clinton by virtue of her fame was a marquee name. That gave her a huge head start out of the gate. As soon as people saw there were options and something fresh and different she faltered.

Barack Obama has multiple landslide primary wins that make West Virginia pretty meaningless. Its unfortunate that Clinton has reduced herself to the toxic tactics of politics of a type people are anxious to ditch. Race-baiting, feeding off of fears and prejudices, appealing to the darkest and basest instincts of those who are vulnerable to that mindset should be beneath her…far beneath her. We got a glimpse into the type of President she would be. I’ve repeated this often during this primary campaign. In the waning days of the 2004 election Bill Clinton advised John Kerry to make a series of speeches across the country strongly condemning same-sex marriage. Kerry thanked him for the advice then told his aids that he would never do that. That speeks volumes about the Clintons, and combined with their race-baiting tactics (pretty constant since SC) the pattern is clear: they would cut anyone’s throat for their own gain.

June 3rd this ends, and good riddence to her and her husband.

I just received an e-mail from Clinton; it sure looks like Huckabee Strategy to me. Obama is not mentioned once. The closest she comes to a jab is saying that she is more electable in the fall. (I have deleted two embedded “click here to contribute now” links)

There are some people out there who want to declare this race over now, before all the ballots have been counted or even cast. There are some who say they don’t know why I’m in this race. So let me tell you why I’m still running.

I’m in this race for everyone who needs a champion. For the hardworking families who are losing sleep over gas prices and grocery costs and mortgage payments and medical bills — but who never lose that American can-do spirit and optimism.

I’m in this race for the more than 16 million people like you who have supported me — for the people who have put their hearts into winning this race. You never gave up on me, and I’ll never give up on you.

We are in the homestretch. After sixteen months, there are only three weeks left to compete in the final contests. With your help I’m going to keep fighting until every last American has a chance to be heard, and as we learned last night in West Virginia, I know we can win.

I’m also in this race because I have the best chance of beating John McCain in November and putting America on the right track.

We proved something in West Virginia last night — a state every Democratic president has won since 1916. And we proved something in a few other battleground states that have a history of picking presidents. Pennsylvania. Ohio. Arkansas. New Hampshire. New Jersey. New Mexico. Nevada. And, yes, Michigan and Florida.

I am in this race, and so are you, because we both know the stakes in this election are too high to stay on the sidelines.

So let’s keep going together, you and me. Let’s keep driving our campaign forward, and let’s keep winning.

I want to thank you again for the incredible generosity of spirit you have shown over the course of this campaign. Together, you and I are going to make history.

Thank you,

Pretty tame, and likely sets up the themes she will use in her exit speech.

Look: You get a big win. You’re in a room filled with cheering supporters. That’s not a time when you say you’re going to drop out, even when you and your staff know it’s inevitable. Savor the moment, even though the state has only five electoral votes.

Yes, the superdelegates need to step up (Obama got a few more today). We can bandy about words like “delusional” and “selfish” and “money-grubbing,” all of which are probably true. But with only five contests left, and with Obama picking up a bunch of delegates next week in Oregon, and then more in Montana and South Dakota, everyone knows it’s over.

The people in those states (sorry; forgot Puerto Rico) really, really want to vote. That’s what this is about at this point. The feeling that you count.

The people I feel sorry for are the ones still sending her money. Also the Democratic candidates who AREN’T getting contributions, because so much money is still tied up in this race.

The most interesting poll I saw this morning was the one that said John McCain would still beat both candidates among voters who are less educated and poorer. Her electability argument is deflated. Obama will beat him by beating him with all kinds of other voters, including all of the new ones.

The most damage is coming from the increasingly negative verbiage from supporters of both candidates. We all need to chill.

I don’t know how anyone can engage in the sort of endless 24/7 campaigning that has taken hold and still be sane, logical, and clear-headed. Ambition can be blinding. Fatigue creates mirages. Entitlement breeds resentment. A more rational person would have already quit.

I can easily see her fighting to the bitter(gate) end because she can’t accept defeat.

We do all need to chill, and I’ve certainly chilled where HRC is concerned. I doubt my feelings towards her are ever going to rise about the melting point after her behavior since February. Until the super-delegates put the last nail in her nomination coffin I doubt she will bow cave. That’s the easiest out for her, but she may not take it.

Over the course of this campaign, I’ve gone from mild dislike of Sen. Clinton and her crew of True Believers to real disgust and near-loathing. She and the former president have revealed themselves as sociopathic narcissists who, dismayingly, really do embody many of the personality traits their right-wing enemies described in the ’90s. It’s embarrassing to have defended them back then.

But even I don’t really see anything wrong with her finishing out the primary season at this point, so long as she doesn’t go all-out to tear down Obama in doing so. Obviously the contest going to places that don’t typically get to cast meaningful primary votes has done something for Democratic energy in those states. Increasingly I do think the prolonged campaign has helped Obama refine his message and start to shore up some of his vulnerabilities–his speech in Missouri yesterday was pretty good, and I’m not sure he would have gotten there in May absent the Clintons’ focus on “kitchen-table issues.”

The key at this point is to escape the primary season with as little enduring bad blood as possible. Hopefully, going through the remaining contests and letting the Clintons claim their victories in Kentucky and Puerto Rico before a hopefully graceful concession will render her supporters somewhat less (ahem) bitter, and more disposed to come home and support the Democratic nominee.

The Clintons are worth about 70 million dollars or so,well how about showing some of that american can do spirit if you are not the nominee and help some of those who supported you and your husband get some sleep by continuing to fight for lower grocery cost,gas prices,medical bills and so forth. Political defeat does not mean an end to your commitment to help people, or does it Hillary? Are you so consumed by “in it to win it” that you will risk further damaging you and your husband’s place in history by adding such footnotes as “delusional”,”racist”,”unstable”.
I see why Senator Kennedy implied your lack of “nobillity”.

You know, Gore did a stupid thing in 2000. He let his anger at Bill Clinton, and his burning desire to be his own man, to create his own brand independent of “Clinton/Gore,” lead him to run away from the Clintons and their vast base of support — to try and prove that he could win wholly on his own, his own terms, his own team, his own supporters without any ties to the Clintons.

Turns out the math didn’t work so hot on that. We all paid the price with 8 years of President Bushie.

So it just pains me to see so many Obama supporters (who I sure as hell hope are not a reflection of their would-be leader) take the exact same attitude and approach – to have this burning desire to prove that the Clintons are impotent by trying to win in November without any Clinton-based support at all. It is as if you’d rather lose to McCain than win with the help of Clinton supporters.

No offense, but the world can’t take that big of a risk just for you to have some petty vengeance. Obama cannot win in November without a substantial percentage of Clinton supporters coming around. Period. To claim otherwise is to show you took classes in Teh Math from Karl Rove.

Edwards has, for the past several months, been sitting on – what? – 23 delegates or so. And both candidates and their supporters have outright kissed his ass a different way for each day of the week and twice on Sundays. You rarely see an unkind word. Yet for Clinton, who is sitting on over 1000 delegates, and tens of millions of proven voting supporters, its hard to ever get a kind word at all. How does that even make the first lick of sense? This is a campaign – y’all now need to campaign for one of the biggest known voting blocks, Clinton supporters.

In case no one has noticed, politics is an additive process, the goal is to add individuals and groups to get a larger total than anyone else. Exclusivity, exclusionary language, and pushing people farther away are not particularly additive. You can subtract (divide?) your way right into a smaller number than McCain.

Seriously. If Obama’s supporters can’t learn to be good winners now, they’ll end up having to learn to be good losers in November.

Mark Pencil

If Gore had NOT separated himself from Bill Clinton and the Monica Lewinsky mess, he would have lost the election fair and square. As it turns out, he won it. He won Florida according to all the post-election counts.

One of the strangest plays in American history was the unwarranted appearance of the Supreme Court who stopped the vote counting when they did NOT lawfully have this authority and thereby gave the election to GW Bush.

THAT’s what gave us eight years of Bush, not Al Gore’s separation from the Clintons. He knew what they were.

“He won Florida according to all the post-election counts.”

Not all of them. Some of them. Enough to be pissed off at.

aristedes –

I could not disagree more. Gore gave up the easiest campaign in history. An overwhelming majority didn’t give a damn about Monica. Clinton left office with one of the highest approval ratings ever. People were sick of Clinton bashing.

But by distancing himself, Gore denied himself credit for 8 years of peace and prosperity. If he had simply run ads of simple line graphs showing key statistics (employment, wages, economic growth, crime rates) of the prior Bush admin versus Clinton/Gore, and asked if people were better off at the end of a Bush presidency or the administration he was a part of, and asked what part of peace and prosperity would people want to give up for Bush. . .

(sorry, my dreamy reverie was interrupted with the realization that we’d be about to hold a convention to coronate Joe Lieberman *shudder*)

No, Gore shoulda and coulda run on Clinton/Gore. He’d have won in a walk. Florida and the Supremes would have never mattered.

Mark Pencil

I think you’re wrong. Every vice president who runs for the presidency must separate him/herself from the prior president. In Gore’s case, a large piece of his platform was bringing decency and family values back into the White House, an obvious reference to the Monica Lewinsky scandal, as well as a challenge to the Republicans who’d swept into Congress — it was a campaign refrain of GW Bush as well.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/election/jan-june99/gore_6-17.html

Gore had some problems, of course, but none of them would have been solved by closely associating himself with Bill Clinton at that time in history.

Clinton, in other words, believes she should save the party from itself.

Kinda elitist of her, isn’t it?

You’ve got to be kidding me. West Virginia is insignificant. There are a million more people who live in Chicago that live in the entire state of West Virginia. This is not even a speed bump in the race to be president. How, anyone could tout this as a major victory is beyond me.

Its also New York, California, Texas, Illinois, New Jersy, Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia Nevada. for starts…its a cross section.

West Virginia is significant as is Kentucky and oregon, Puerto Rico. There is support for her in largest city centres and the smallest rural communities. If the media would give her the same level of media support as Barack Obama and quit alienating her supporters she would win…but the media is making Obama.

Its sad but true-Obama (if on the ticket) will not win in November and the push to get republicans out will continue.

Shocking…isn’t it? A younger handsome man (John Edwards) endorses the other younger handsome man over the older, more experienced woman. Forget it Hillary…they’d just as soon see you “baking cookies in the kitchen” than make history!

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