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February 20, 2008
Too late for tears
Posted by: Chris
Even before Hillary Clinton lost two more primaries last night, Mickey Kaus was suggesting she make a play for the sympathy vote, since it proved so successful after the tears episode in New Hampshire:
Hillary does best when Democratic voters sense she's about to get brutally knocked out of the race, as in New Hampshire. That prospect taps a well of residual sympathy for a woman who has devoted her life to politics, etc. But when Hillary is triumphant she seems arrogant and unbearable, and voters feel free to express those perceptions at the polls. …
If she wins Wisconsin, and holds a big happy victory rally trumpeting her newfound momentum, the result will be a another surge of support for Obama.
As things turned out, Hillary lost Wisconsin in a 17-point landslide and held a big happy victory rally anyway. Rather than acknowledge she's on the verge of losing the nomination, she once again didn't reference the reason her speech was playing on national television.
The suggestion of humility is a very good one, made earlier by Peggy Noonan, but last night would probably have been too late. The time to do it would have been a week ago, after the Potomac Primary blowout, perhaps gaining enough groundswell to win in Maine and be more competitive in Wisconsin. Instead, Hillary stayed in denial mode.
Why? The Clinton campaign gambit is that if she wins Ohio, Texas and Pennsylvania -- even by slim margins -- she will have the momentum and can make the case to superdelegates that the party should not nominate a candidate (Obama) who has lost the big states -- California, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Texas.
Mark Penn is already tipping their hand on this point, according to Politico's Ben Smith:
"It would be hard to imagine a nominee from this party who didn’t win" any of a series of big states — New York, Massachusetts, Michigan, Florida, Texas, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. (I'm not sure whether he mentioned California, but obviously that's on the list.)
Note that Penn is counting Michigan and Florida, where the primaries were disqualified, and New York, Clinton's home state. Conversely he's not including Illinois, Obama's home state, and populous states like Missouri, Virginia, Minnesota and Washington state, which Obama won. (And Georgia, a reader points out.)
Of course should Hillary lose any of Ohio, Texas or Pennsylvania -- and Texas is already deadlocked -- then even this long-shot strategy is sunk. Would superdelegates really agree that big states are more important than small states, given how the electoral college works? Very, very unlikely.
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Comments
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I'm not worried about John McCain at the moment. What concerns me is the behaviour of Hillary Clinton. Now she knows she lost, she will try and torpedo Obama's bid, so she can get in 2012. She is well capable of this and I expect it fully.
Obama is a lot shrewder than you think he is. Look at how he baited Bill Clinton in SC. It worked a treat.
He will do fine.
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Don't forget Obama also won Georgia, the country's ninth most populous state!
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Al, I doubt Hillary will go nuclear, actually. The risk of backfire is too great and risks her future, including a 2012 run if McCain is elected.
R, you are right, of course. I only lived there for a decade! The Clinton camp discounted Georgia because of the large black vote (Jesse Jackson won the state), but it absolutely represents a large state won by Obama.
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Al Halpern hit the nail on the head. People who dismiss Obama as hot air simply don't see how shrewd he is. He had to be to win the a US Senate seat from Illinois. Few people have any idea what he battled to win that election by the biggest landslide in Illinois history. He knows exactly what he's doing.
Sure, he could choke. But I think his healthy ego will disallow it.
The comments to this entry are closed.
Al Halpern on Feb 20, 2008 3:29:36 PM:
I'm not worried about John McCain at the moment. What concerns me is the behaviour of Hillary Clinton. Now she knows she lost, she will try and torpedo Obama's bid, so she can get in 2012. She is well capable of this and I expect it fully.
Obama is a lot shrewder than you think he is. Look at how he baited Bill Clinton in SC. It worked a treat.
He will do fine.