Decision ‘08

The Beginning Of The End For Billary Mach II?

The vaunted Clinton machine is on deathwatch, there’s no doubt about it. More and more polls show Texas to be a toss-up (it was solidly Hillary in the ancient past - say, a couple of weeks ago). Ohio remains Clinton territory, for now, but by single-digits, and the momentum is on the other side. Many people took Hillary’s closing remarks in the Texas debate to be a tacit admission that she has lost the nomination - a notion her camp has denied.

And Michaal Barone, an always-astute observer of electoral trends, says it feels like the general election campaign has already begun:

It’s starting to feel like the general election. Rising to claim victory in the Wisconsin Republican primary before the networks could declare Barack Obama the winner on the Democratic side, John McCain started right in on his general election opponent.

He promised to “make sure Americans are not deceived by an eloquent but empty call for change that promises no more than a holiday from history and a return to false promises and failed policies of a tired philosophy that trusts in government more than the people.”

Scorch. Some 40 minutes later, Hillary Clinton got up before the cameras and set out her platform as if she were the winner, ignoring Obama as she had on primary night the week before. Having not been extended this courtesy, Obama did not extend her the courtesy of waiting for her to finish before he began his victory speech.

The networks quickly switched for Clinton to Obama, who went on for 45 minutes, cutting and pasting platform planks into the unspecific ode to hope that has enchanted so many voters.

That camera switch may turn out to be the beginning of the end of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. She’s still hoping for victories in Ohio and Texas on March 4, but Obama’s margin in Wisconsin makes that seem less likely, and in any case, she will still be behind in delegates. She could win the nomination only with the votes of super-delegates or by counting the results in Florida and Michigan, where the national party commanded candidates not to compete.

Either move will strike many Obama enthusiasts — and others — as profoundly unfair. The way Clinton has run her campaign — like the way she ran health care reform in 1993-94 — undercuts her claim to be ready for the presidency from day one. In both cases, she had no fallback strategy, no Plan B, in case her best-case scenario failed to come to pass.

Obama will be a tough candidate to beat…and will probably govern farther from the left than Hillary. The prospect of another four to eight years of the Clinton circus, however, is almost more than I - and apparently a good number of Democrats - can bear…

4 Responses to “The Beginning Of The End For Billary Mach II?”

1 Smith Says:
February 23rd, 2008 at 12:47 pm
I think candidate selection is almost over in both the Democratic and Republic parties. Obama and McCain are the two, all set for the stage of competition of President. I believe Hillary self kicked herself from the choice of winning candidate chance for president.
2 Ryan Says:
February 23rd, 2008 at 4:52 pm
I think trying to tease out which of Hillary and Obama is further “left” is not a particularly useful exercise. He seems to be to her left on foreign policy, in that he rejected the Iraq War from the beginning and pays less lip service to the bipartisan consensus that we own the world, although even that’s not a particularly useful metric (I would argue). On domestic policy, he has certainly staked his health care position on territory to Hillary’s right. And his record on energy may or may not be a result of his representing Illinois, so I don’t think there’s any way to predict where he’d go on that issue.
3 Clint Says:
February 24th, 2008 at 8:12 am
This is one of the things that has bothered me the most about Hillary during the past two months: “Hillary Clinton got up before the cameras and set out her platform as if she were the winner, ignoring Obama as she had on primary night the week before.”

It’s traditional for the losing candidate to congratulate the winning one on election night. That’s why the news stations have camera’s there — to catch the candidates making their concession and acceptance speeches. Sure, the losing candidate typically has one insincere sentence congratulating the rival before putting their own spin on it and transitioning into a stump speech, but they always Since South Carolina, Hillary has completely ignored this and just given her stump speech.

I don’t know whether this is just gross ingraciousness or a sign of some underlying pathological need to deny reality that underlies the pathological lying of the Clinton years, but it’s really rubbed me the wrong way every time she does it.
4 rawdawgbuffalo Says:
February 24th, 2008 at 10:47 pm
well whatever happens, they need to deal with FLA & MICH if they want a nified paty in the end