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Posted on Friday 23 May 2008


What Hillary Wants
By Eugene Robinson

Commentators trying to discern Hillary Clinton’s endgame strategy have posited any number of wheels-within-wheels scenarios worthy of a spy novel. The simple truth has nothing to do with logic and everything to do with instinct: Keep moving forward until you drop.

It’s not that she’s making a calculated play for the vice presidency or trying to set herself up for another campaign in 2012 or 2016. To those who know her, it’s that she really wants to be president, and that she has come tantalizingly close, and that she’s going to keep moving toward that goal even if there’s no obvious way to reach it…

But the Clinton campaign has found a way to claim that if for some reason you did this ridiculous exercise of lumping together apples, oranges and bowling balls, and finally came up with two numbers, hers would be greater than Obama’s. Since Obama now leads substantially in both pledged delegates and superdelegates – and since he has enormous leads in fundraising and the number of states won – the spurious "popular vote" metric is all that Clinton has. So she’s playing the hand she was dealt…

Even this tenuous advantage, however, requires counting all the votes cast for Clinton in Michigan, where Obama wasn’t on the ballot, and in Florida, where neither candidate campaigned…

Hillary Clinton is after the White House, and if that means using the Florida and Michigan "issue" to tie the party in knots until the convention, so be it. If that’s not what party leaders want, they’d better do something. Because Clinton is going to keep moving forward.
As I read this, I kept thinking of that keynote speech Bill Clinton made in 1988 at the Democratic Convention – the one where he wouldn’t stop talking [way beyond endurance]. And I heard the music they played during his campaigns: "Don’t – stop – thinking about tomorrow." And I remembered how he fought on trying to evade the Monica accusations, and then fought on even after he confessed. That scandal, and maybe Clinton’s persistence, probably ended it for Gore in 2000. I think Eugene Robinson’s thesis is so simple, it must be right – that Hillary Clinton is keeping on keeping on simply because that’s what the Clintons do – and the consequences don’t matter. She wants what she wants. There’s a Kenny Rogers song that the Clintons haven’t gone for: "You gotta know when to hold em, and know when to fold em."

Will she continue until she tanks the Democratic Party’s chances to win the Presidency? She doesn’t seem to be thinking about that. Can the Democratic leadership stop her? Not so far. Will placating her in some way tone down her rhetoric? Frankly, I doubt it. If the DNC keeps handling her with kid gloves, she won’t stop. If they confront her, get tough, she’ll take her votes and run, or they’ll vote for McCain. If they offer her the Vice Presidency, even if she took it she might just keep running against Obama even from that office. What Robinson is implying is that there’s really no way out – except to give her the nomination. Will they do that? I doubt it. Not now.

I guess we thought Reverend Wright was going to be Barack Obama’s challenge, his Profile in Courage. He met that one head on when he was finally backed into a corner [and he got mad]. Looks like it’s time for Round 2, and it’s quite a challenge. And it may well go to the Convention, and even beyond…
Addendum: I heard President Clinton interviewed not long ago about the Monica episode in retrospect. He said something like, ‘What’s bad about that story is that the reason I did it is because I could." I thought at the time that he was having a good insight, and actually, he was. But he hasn’t generalized that insight to other situations where it should be applied. Like this one…
  1.  
    Felix E F Larocca MD
    May 23, 2008 | 6:13 AM
     

    This family is beyond definition in terms of how corrupt its three principal members are. As for Hillary, a psychoanalysis dream of a Phallic Narcissistic Idiot!

    Too dangerous of a pathological mind to occupy the Oval Office!

  2.  
    T. Yeargain
    July 3, 2009 | 10:30 AM
     

    In reference to Felix Larocca’s comment – He really has no room to talk, being an unethical, corrupt, narcissistic idiot himself.

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