Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Waning Hope

John Cole pretty much gets it right on Clinton:

Even if she blows him out (and I expect her to win by 6-12 pts), she won’t make up any real ground in the delegate race, which, as we all know (except, apparently, at Clinton HQ), is what matters. All she has is the hope that the super-delegates will give it to her, and the only way that is going to happen is if she absolutely destroys his chances at electability. And she has to do just that, because if the supers give Clinton the nomination under any circumstance other than one in which Obama is completely ruined, expect large swaths of Democrats to bail in the general. Forget the AA vote.

That is her gambit. That is her only hope. She won’t win North Carolina, Indiana will be so close as to give marginal gains, and all she has is this last hope that she can knee-cap him and get it from the supers. Of course, she most likely won’t succeed, and instead we will have a crippled Obama limping into the general against a united Republican party armed with a half year of Clinton video clips calling Obama elitist and out of touch and unelectable and stating she takes him at his word that he is not a stealth muslim. By the end of the week I fully expect her to be asking whether or not he is a Marxist.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Also see this in the Washington Post today.

Being naturally optimistic, I tend to believe that this all may be less damaging to the likely nominee than it now looks. The polls that are starting to come out after Obama's poorly worded comment show no damage to him.

But I'm wondering how the triangulating Hillary sees this as ultimately affecting her second-place possibilities. Her fallback position was earlier mooted as Senate majority leader. If she's thoroughly trashed the President, does that make sense to her colleagues? I guess she can be governor of New York.

Perhaps she is depending on Obama's desire to bring the country together, and forgiving his enemy in the primary would be a part of that.

Although I guess it comes down to the insanity of being inside the campaign bubble: she is the only one who can save the country, so she must do anything and everything toward that goal.