Sod sees a bad moon arisin’.
By Erik Hagen • Feb 22nd, 2008 • Category: Politics
After Tuesday’s thrashing in Wisconsin and Hawaii, some might be wondering what Hillary Clinton’s plans are now for how she can possibly still win the Democratic nomination for President. Me, I don’t have any idea, but I do know what her plan was from three weeks ago.
The Clinton camp hopes to stop the Obama bandwagon by winning Texas and Ohio primaries on March 4, after which Mrs Clinton is planning to call on party grandees including Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House of Representatives and Harry Reid, the party’s leader in the Senate, to persuade Mr Obama to stand down.
Yeah. So basically, after Obama winning ten states in a row decisively, Hillary’s plan was to squeak out two wins and then demand that the party heads make Obama quit. That’s some fine thinking there.
Now that we’ve returned to reality, it is time to consider some actual options for Hillary Clinton.
- Drop out now.
- Wait for Texas and Ohio to vote in two weeks. Lose one or both. Drop out then.
- Wait for Texas and Ohio to vote in two weeks. Win both. Win Pennsylvania. Win all the other states. Take a substantial pledged delegate lead into the convention. Have superdelegates back her unanimously. Have Florida and Michigan votes counted. Win Democratic nomination. Win Presidency. Celebrate with martinis.
- Hang on through rest of campaign. Win a few. Lose most. For the entire duration, conduct a scorched earth campaign against Barack Obama, driving up his negatives. Lose the nomination at the convention and leave Obama battered and bruised with only three months left to campaign nationally, making it that much easier for John McCain to swoop in and snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.
Now, personally, I like both options one and two. Option three is a trick answer, being that it’s a complete and utter fairy tale. And option four is, unfortunately, probably what’s going to happen.
Let’s face facts. Barack Obama is the Democratic nominee for President. The odds of Hillary Clinton coming from behind and winning this thing are slightly on par with me growing duck wings out of my back and flying to the moon - There’s a slight chance of it happening, but I sure as hell wouldn’t put any money down on it. So the only role that Hillary Clinton has left to play is surrogate for John McCain. She can continue campaigning like she did in Wisconsin - goading him into debates, accusing him of being all words, bringing up bullshit charges of plagiarism, turning Michelle Obama into a pariah over a poorly-worded sentiment, blah, blah, blah. Will any of that help Hillary Clinton become President? Not a chance. But it sure does stand a decent shot of making John McCain President.
At this point, Hillary Clinton can either pull the greatest political comeback of all time, bow out with some amount of dignity still intact, or go down kicking and screaming, dragging her party and her followers down with her. For everyone’s sake, I sure as hell hope she doesn’t go with option C.
Erik Hagen is comprised of equal parts X and Y chromosomes, snips, snails, puppy dog tails, and a whole lot of water. He was born into this world covered in blood, naked, and slightly hysterical. Very little has changed since.
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You, me and everyone else in the country know that she’s going to take option #4. She’s a Clinton, and they don’t concede defeat readily, even when it’s apparent.
I thought that the debate last night was a yawn-fest for the most part, with neither of them doing much. If anything, I thought that Obama came off a bit better, as he did show that he could discuss policy and had answers and ideas. Hillary, when she started reaching, came off as desperate to score points and make “silly” jabs at Barack, which the crowd caught and booed appropriately.
Don’t think McCain is invincible, though. Even if the current crop of sketchy allegations from the NYTimes don’t stick, they open the floodgates for reporters and everyone else to sift through every bit of his past to try and dig up dirt. I don’t for one second think that he’s clean, war hero or not. Not to mention, he cannot connect with any age group besides retirees, and sense he seems to have no idea how the economy works, he might not even be able to count on the fiscal conservatives as among his base. Plus, look at the voters tallies from the primaries so far. The Dems have had the highest turnout by far. If that continues in a general election, he’ll be destroyed, no matter who the candidate is.
Nevertheless, Hillary needs to realize that it’s not her time. Obama has won more than twice as many states, small or not, than she has, and he’s won them by large margins. People do not want her. Period.
[...] so here’s the deal. You may have heard earlier that there’s no chance in hell of Hillary Clinton winning the nomin… Well, to that I can only say that in this particular case, reality is complete bullshit. True, [...]
I wish that she would have been the choice in this race for the democrats. I am not sure what they were really thinking this time around, and after she was not endorsed I was sure that they would have her run with Obama. That would have insured that she would still be in the white house.