No Nonsense
Dream ticket to misery ticket
NOTWITHSTANDING the near impossibility of overtaking Senator Barack Obama in all three categories (winning number of states, popular votes, and pledged delegates), Senator Hilary Clinton is vowing to take her bid for the Democratic presidential nomination (DPN) to the end -- the August 25-28 convention in Denver -- ignoring the "quit now" calls from party bosses.
Party leaders are visibly worried that the increasingly contentious rhetoric and unguarded mutual diatribes between Clinton and Obama campaigns is squandering what once looked like a near-certain victory for either one in the November presidential election.
Most experts opine that Hilary's biggest liability, or baggage if you will, is her husband --the former president Bill Clinton.
Although behind in every category, the Clinton surrogates, to the bewilderment of Obama and others, recently floated the idea of choosing Obama as Clinton's running mate. The table seems to have turned the other way -- the logical way, with the winner at the top of the ticket -- and behind the scene, the whisper now is for an Obama-Clinton ticket.
Maureen Dowd in The New York Times asked: "Is Hillary really willing to play 'second fiddle' to Obama, or is the suggestion a 'red herring' aiming to divert attention from her 'real endgame' -- tipping the election to John McCain so she could have another shot in 2012?"
Any such insidious political choreography by the Clintons is believable given the extent they went to, to discredit Obama and destroy his electability credentials. They openly campaign that Obama is not electable, stopping short of saying "America is not ready to elect a black president," but keep hovering around it in coded words and phrases.
The casualty, however, is Senator Clinton -- her negatives skyrocketed to 48% vs. Obama's 28% (NBC/WSJ Poll). Most commentators are convinced that she brought in more negatives to her candidacy than Obama's negative campaigns directed at her credentials.
Obama seems to have weathered most, if not all, the negativities inflicted on him by the Clinton campaign. The ruckus brought about by persistent media coverage of his association with Reverend Jeremiah Wright appears to be fading as well. In a tracking Gallup Poll last week, Obama took the lead from Clinton, 52% vs 42 % -- a 17-point reversal from two weeks ago.
The tracking telephone interviews (March 7-22) with 6,657 Democratic voters, aged 18 and older, revealed that 28% of Clinton supporters would vote for Republican McCain if Obama was the Democratic Party's nominee, while 19% of Obama supporters would vote for McCain if Clinton was the nominee. This anti-Obama feeling among Clinton supporters may be the byproduct of Clinton's negative campaigning.
What is openly devious though is that Bill Clinton, at every campaign rally, promotes Republican John McCain with glowing words of his military and senatorial services to the nation and compares those with Senator Clinton's -- and also says that they both love the country, as if Obama doesn't. President Clinton is openly promoting a Clinton vs McCain race in the November presidential election to sway, if possible, the support of the "super-delegates" towards his wife.
The reality everyone is seeing is that Obama is going to be the nominee unless some earth-shattering discovery brings him down before the August convention. One opportunity that may have been missed -- to the utter disappointment of the Clintons -- was the Jeremiah Wright controversy.
If Obama is elected president, and reelected for a second term, Senator Clinton will be 70 when she gets a second shot at the presidency -- the second oldest candidate ever, after McCain. Waiting for that second shot will not only be too late but is also unrealistic. McCain has already indicated that, if elected, he may not run for the second term, which makes Clinton's, at 65, quest for the White House seem more realistic and attainable.
Melinda Henneberger, in Slate's Trailhead blog said that iit is now impossible for Hillary to win the nomination outright. So it makes one wonder whether she really is hanging in there to do the maximum damage to her party's nominee, weakening his chances in the fall, and building the "I-told-you-so case" for another, possibly final, shot at the White House in four years.
Governor Phil Bredesen of Tennessee, a Democrat, proposed a primary of the 795 party super-delegates (party bigwigs) in June, and holding a binding vote after hearing Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama plead their cases.
Although the proposition, if acted upon, would avoid a Democratic "summer-long meltdown," the super-delegates "mini-convention" appears "the most fair, reasonable, and obtainable solution (said Craig Crawford in CQ's Trail Mix blog)."
The proposition is yet to gain acceptance in the two camps. Since the super-delegates are going to decide the eventual candidate anyway, why wait -- and why not let the nominating process end -- for whichever Democrat wins: the sooner they decide, the better.
Most election watchers say that Clinton has every right to keep her campaign going until June (end of primary season). However, Bob Beckel, in Real Clear Politics, said that if she pushed her scorched earth strategy she would spoil her own political future.
For one thing, it would torpedo the option of running for vice-president, and, barring some "fatal mistake" by Obama, that's the best she can do. "If she thinks it over, running for vice- president" isn't so bad. "It may not be as historic as being the first woman president, but it is historic -- still the fastest path to the big job."
Many election watchers, columnists, and Democratic Party loyalists believe that the two on one ticket would win against Republic John McCain. But the ongoing reciprocity in diatribes is increasingly turning a once "dream ticket" into something more like a "misery ticket." Besides, we all wonder, how would any one keep Vice-President Clinton from out-staging and over-stepping President Obama?
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