It’s Over
So, it looks like Hillary won Indiana by only a small amount, while Obama had a crushing victory in North Carolina. The numbers in Indiana were so tight that it is in essence a victory for Obama.
That’s it. Time for Senator Clinton to concede.
Obama should probably offer her the Veep slot (and she’d be a fool to turn it down).
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16 comments
You are right- it is time for Clinton to step aside. You are right- Obama should offer her the VP slot. You are right- she would be a fool not to take it.
The problem is, she is focussed on winning at all costs so she’ll not step aside, nor would she accept the VP slot… and Obama is unlikely to offer it to her.
I feel a certain sympathy for the woman- this really was supposed to be her nomination for the taking, and would be, but for the vocal fringe of the party.
Well, I didn’t say it’s what would happen. But it’s what should happen.
You both are wrong. Clinton should stay in the running right until the end of the Democratic Party 2008 convention in Denver in August.
Most of Obama’s support is from blacks and rich young leftist liberal whites. He gets little or no support from working class whites; small town or rural whites; Roman Catholics; Jews; Latinos; Asian-Americans. And he surely does not get women. These patterns have been repeated in one state after another.
And other than Illinois, Clinton has won all the population-significant state primary elections. In my opinion, the activist-rigged caucuses count for nothing, and I pay no attention to them. Only elections where people make their choices in the privacy of voting booths.
And if he does in fact get the democratic nomination for president, then McCain’s campaign — or others not even involved in his campaign running their own separately paid-for advertising — will wipe the floor with Obama. The junior senator from Illinois will be referred to universally as Barack Hussein Obama, and Americans will believe that he is secretely a Moslem, irrespective of how many church services he attends with the jesus folks.
All of this will take place in print; on television; and on thousands of big and little blogsites. Reverend Jeremiah ("God Damn America") Wright will be drummed into consciousness as the Willie Horton of the 2008 presidential campaign, from whom Barack Hussein Obama can never and never will be able to run away.
And in expected good old american presidential campaigning style, McCain will be taking the high road and even sternly denouncing all the suddenly re-arisen bad old american racism. (Race never really goes away; all we have done is to pretend that it has. Whenever people are pressed over the politics of identity, they always come up like dominoes; either white or black.)
Clinton as Obama’s vice presidential running mate? I would be most surprised if she has anything whatsoever to do with Obama’s campaign. Or that his campaign managers would even want her around. In any case, after an adult lifetime with Bill, I think she almost certainly made a vow never to be anybody else’s second fiddle ever again.
As for me personally, I’m not interested in any candidacy of anybody who ventures very far from the middle of the road in national politics. That means I could equally support McCain or Clinton. I could never support Obama for much the same reason I would not supported Huckabee but would have supported Giuliani.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
I cannot support Obama either, and not because of cheap lies about him like the "he’s secretly a Muslim."
That said, many of the very things you say about the voters Clinton wins, Arnold, point to why Obama should want her on the ticket. While she can deliver no specific state, she will lead many of those people who are suspicious about Obama to trust him more. And, the large segment of the party base angry that the first serious woman candidate was rejected will be greatly mollified.
I game it out this way:
If Clinton accepts the Vice Presidential slot, and the ticket loses in November, she keeps her Senate seat and is still a very viable candidate for 2012, when she will be able to say, "See, you should have nominated me in the first place!"
If Clinton accepts the Vice Presidential slot, and the ticket wins in November, she makes history as the first woman elected to a national office, is a heartbeat away from the Oval Office, and is also the presumptive Democratic nominee come 2012 or 2016, depending on how an Obama Presidency works out.
If Clinton refuses the Vice Presidential slot, she goes back to being the Junior Senator from New York facing re-election in 2012 and, having lost in 2008, will be put out to pasture by the party, with some good memories but an eternal bitterness about what might have been.
I see nothing outside of those three scenarios that look likely. She should take the offer if it’s made, and Obama would be foolish not to make it.
Clinton wouldn’t do any serious campaigning for Obama, and the Obama people know it. She has her own political base, and the nutual animosity between them and the obama folk is one of the most remarkable aspects of the 2008 campaign.
And no, she would not want to be just another Ferraro. Hillary Rodham Clinton is made of much sterner stuff than that.
In any case, she knows as well as anybody who has hung around politics knows, that her best chance is to stay clear of the whole obama loveboat fairytale, calmly watching it go down and sink in November 2008.
McCain will be in his upper 70s by 2012. The politics of the moment — as always — will have changed markedly from what they are today. Every presidential election is its own kaleidoscope. That, for her, could be the opportunity for which she has hungered throughout the years as Bill’s second fiddle.
In any case, it isn’t necessarily over yet. She will make a battle to seat the Florida and Michigan delegates at the August 2008 convention. More than a small number of Democrats from those two states will not vote for anybody at all from that party if their own primary election choices are invalidated by the Democratic Party.
And a lot of super-delegates will be seriously scanning the broken out data of who voted for whom in all these primaries, and the extent to which Obama’s nomination, if it comes to that, shall have been copped by the minority black vote, a vote that will have little overall meaning in a national election.
So I don’t think it’s over, Dean. And I don’t think Hillary Clinton thinks it’s over, which is a lot more significant than what you and I think.
But I’m frequently wrong about my assumptions. We shall see what there is to be seen.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Based on the rancor between Obama & Clinton, a ticket with both would be a triumph of politics over integrity.
I was wrong on the outcome in North Carolina, but Hillary should NOT bow out.
Superdelegates are still the decider, and even though I think they will have to more or less fall in line behind the voters, I don’t see them all voting as a bloc.
It is also unknown whether there are enough foolish-consistency hobgoblins in Howard Dean’s head to hold firm on disenfranchising Michigan and Florida for having the temerity to refuse to bow down to the favoritism reserved for the "early states."
Inv A. DeSoda’s last blog post..The Assassination Smear 2
I think Arnold’s pretty much right on this one. She’ll fight hard for the delegates from Florida and Michigan (as she should - that mess was entirely the Democrats’ own fault). Obama’s support will continue to soften as McCain’s solidifies. And provided she hasn’t withdrawn (or allowed herself to be co-opted by the Obama campaign) Hillary may be seen as the better choice. She hasn’t lost yet.
And, to be honest, in the back of my mind I think Hillary would rather see McCain as President than Obama, for both political and practical reasons. Even though she’s not going to Leiberman-ize herself by actually saying this out loud. McCain’s probably only going to serve one term, and it’d be fairly easy for Hillary to either co-opt or repudiate his moderate politics depending on how it turns out. Obama, on the other hand, is either going to do well and serve two terms or screw up and ruin the Democrats’ chances in the next election. Either way, an Obama Presidency is less attractive for Ms. Clinton.
bcostin’s last blog post..President Lincoln, call your office.
P Mike,
I don’t see how that’s possible given that Obama and Clinton have nearly identical positions almost across the board. The rancor is a byproduct of "I want to WIN" and nothing else. Once one or the other party concedes defeat you will be amazed by how quickly the rancor will fade into irrelevance.
From what I’ve read Hillary is on a mission to save the Dems from repeating 1972, in which the activists nominated a candidate they liked but the rest of the country didn’t. Keep in mind that during that election you had an unpopular war and a soft economy, yet a Republican still managed to win in a landslide. That whole debacle is the reason behind the Dems "superdelegates" as Susan Estrich noted yesterday.
As the past 2 months have proven, Obama is no messiah. His charisma and speeches haven’t dipped him in Teflon as some expected. And the primaries aren’t pure democracy; keep in mind that only 4% of democrats have actually voted in the things. The Democrats could draft Gore to run if they really wanted to, and there would be nothing illegal about it.
Hillary stands a better chance against McCain. She knows it; Estrich knows it, and the Republican National Committee knows it. Unfortunately the DNC doesn’t, which is a relief to McCain supporters like myself.
But all this cr@p about her giving up is just that: cr@p. She’s on a mission, and if she doesn’t quit she can still pull off the upset of the past 50 years.
Operation… Chaos.
From what I’ve read Hillary is on a mission to save the Dems from repeating 1972
From what I’ve read Hillary is on a mission that is solely about her personal ambition, and always has been. The idea that she is slugging it out at this point for the good of the party is hard for me to swallow.
Ron Coleman’s last blog post..The long and rocky road
Can I just say something?
Seriously.
Hillary needs to bow out.
There is no benefit to her winning the nomination - AT THIS POINT - (even if it is, very technically, possible) that would be sufficient to make up for the, uhm, "difficulties", a Hillary nomination would create for the democratic party’s relationship with blacks.
I hate race/gender politics, but it’s here to stay, and if Hillary cared about anything besides her own sense of entitlement to the levers of power, she’d say to herself something along the lines of:
"The BEST I can hope for is to create incredible anger among one of the party’s most important constituents, and it’s just not worth it. He’s the best black candidate we’re likely to have. He has enfranchised blacks more than anyone in a LONG time. His politics are identical to what mine are on Tuesdays, Fridays, and every third Sunday, so I can live with him politically. Yep. Time to move on, Hil. After all, there’s more to life than politics. I mean, there’s….
….
….
….
????"
Snippet, I don’t think that the Democratic party would benefit themselves or their black constituency if they just handed Obama the nomination. If he gets a reputation as his own party’s affirmative action candidate then he’s doomed in the general election.
bcostin’s last blog post..President Lincoln, call your office.
They wouldn’t be "just handing it to him."
He’s earned it. He’s ahead. Tearing him down to win will create bad blood that will hurt democrats more than a Hillary nominee will help.
She could make the exit graceful enough to not make it look affirmative actiony, if she wanted to, but she doesn’t.
I’m looking forward to listening to Michelle Obama complain about how the White House staff is deliberately putting too much cinnamon in her latte just because they can’t handle a black first lady.
I love how people keep pushing the tired canard that the "Republican attack machine" will slime Obama with lies and innuendo to win the election.
Here’s the deal. Even if there was any difference between the Republican and Democrat attack machines, it doesn’t matter because they don’t need lies and innuendo to win the election.
The truth will suffice.
And since McCain surely does not have the gonads to run on the truth, I sincerely hope private citizens and organizations take the torch and run with it.
CosmicConservative’s last blog post..The Daily Toon
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