Via CNN: After big win, Clinton vows to push forward
Howard Wolfson, Clinton’s communication director, said the New York senator is “in until the very end.”
“We think we’re going to be the nominee. We’re going to make our case to the superdelegates,” he said.
First off, what’s with the “we”? Since when did we have a plural executive?
Second, such a statement is a clear admission that Clinton can’t win by actually, well, winning elections. Instead, she can only win (as has been clear for quite some time) by swaying a large number of superdelegates. While this is a maneuver well within the Democratic Party’s rules, it does contradict the notion that she is the strongest candidate (i.e., it seems manifestly obvious that the strongest candidate wouldn’t have to rely on the superdelegates to overcome another candidate).
It is also noteworthy that on the one hand, Clinton argues that winning a state in the primary means that one will likely win it in the fall, yet on the other hand, as the candidate who has lost more states, she is the stronger candidate. If this was an episode of the original Star Trek, my computer would explode due having to deal with that logical conflict.1
Yglesias notes a version of the “we won this state, so only we can win it later” argument from WV:
As the Clinton campaign sagely points out “no Democrat has won the White House without winning West Virginia since 1916″ and therefore Obama’s primary loss shows that despite his large lead in the polls over John McCain, he can’t possible win the election.
Of course, he goes on to note that by this “logic” the Dems are Doomed in the Fall:
no Democrat has won the White House without carrying Minnesota since 1912 (it went for Teddy Roosevelt’s Bull Moose party) so given that Obama won Minnesota and Clinton won West Virginia, McCain is guaranteed to win the general election
And there you have it.
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Clinton obviously is admitting she can’t win through the primary process, but the same can *technically* be said about Obama. Even if he’s ahead in every important way, the party rules say that this one will be settled by the superdelegates unless someone drops out. She can hang until August and have it settled at the convention if she wants to. I’m not sure if the bigshots in the Dem party will be happy about that if if happens, but the rules are the rules; they made their bed and now they get to sleep in it.
Since it became mathematically impossible for either candidate to win without someone voluntarily dropping out, I’ve just assumed it would go that way, and Clinton seems to be suggesting here that she is willing to do that. This should be no surprise to anyone, as between her and Bill, the egos involved are simply too massive to let go. Good of the party? They don’t care about the party. With those two it’s always been about ME.
That’s how narcisism works.
Comment by Captain D — Wednesday, May 14, 2024 @ 5:44 pm