Political jujitsu ahead if Clinton campaign goes live again
by Bob Hoig, Publisher
Midlands Business Journal
It makes for an interesting mind game.
A presumed winner for his party’s nomination for president is bullied to consider putting on the ticket a woman both he and his wife loathe.
He might be forced into it, however, or face the wrath of voters and party elders for refusing a chance to unify the factions for a difficult general election in November.
The woman, who coincidentally has beaten the winner in the popular vote, reciprocates the loathing, as does her husband, a former president. She is coerced by the same elders to end her campaign.
She merely suspends things and dutifully endorses the winner, but in a way that leads some to doubt. She might be “keeping her powder dry” for re-entry, as one cable news pundit put it.
In the name of party unity, she pretends to covet a vice presidency offer. Having others agitate publicly for her “right” to the second spot is the best way to guarantee the offer will never come.
To actually accept would force the disbanding of delegates, closing out of fundraising, and surrendering the last hope to mount a convention floor fight to gain the top of the ticket.
Since we are talking about Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, a Wall Street Journal story Monday needs noting that Clinton backers are already circulating petitions asking her to get back in contention. She is said to disown the effort.
No one who watched the speech Clinton gave to campaign workers in New York on the night Obama claimed victory can doubt the growing animosity in look, word and deed between the Clintons and the Obamas.
During his Minneapolis victory speech, just when he declared himself the nominee and presumably arrived at the pinnacle of his political life, an unsmiling Obama thrust out his jaw in a Benito Mussolini-like pose as if to say, “This one’s for you, Hillary!”
She dropped in a devastating line on the Obamas the next day herself, one certain to get Michelle Obama’s attention. During a speech to a major conference of Jewish voters, Clinton first acknowledged the group’s new president, while never mentioning Obama or his historic achievement the night before.
She took a counter line to a well-publicized Obama position, saying she would never meet with leaders of Hamas until they renounced terrorism and stopped educating children to hate.
That last line alone – “educating children to hate,” with the obvious back story of the Obamas regularly shepherding their young children to Reverend Wright and Reverend Pfleger – could guarantee no vice president offer ever for Hillary, none at least that Michelle Obama would sign off on.
Hillary’s mass rally for campaign workers and well-wishers Saturday to announce suspending the campaign was a zinger. Billed in some circles as an event to “end” the campaign and to back Obama fully, it didn’t quite do either.
The decision merely to suspend leaves matters in place for a grand return – another in the string of “she’s baaack!” Hillary moments.
Clinton’s words rang true during the 20 minutes of the 25 minutes she devoted herself to speaking about the campaign, its struggles, her wish to lead as a beacon for women, and the sad climax that fell just short of delegates, but not short of reaching the highest popular vote total in any Democratic primary.
Obama wasn’t there and probably just as well. He was spared hearing the scattering of boos and seeing the few arms raised with thumbs down when his name was mentioned.
Events leading to Saturday were a bit weird too. Diane Feinstein, the California senator and Hillary friend, revealed later that she granted Clinton’s request to use her Washington, D.C., home for a secret private meeting with Obama.
While a plane load full of reporters waited on the tarmac for the winner who never came, Obama and Clinton were meeting one on one in front of Feinstein’s fireplace. According to the hostess, there were no reporters, no witnesses, no note takers for the historic record. No Feinstein either, because she retired to the upstairs so that the two could talk entirely alone.
Hillary came 30 minutes early, the hostess said. Obama was 30 minutes late, raising the idea in some minds that he himself might be up for a little domination practice.
Obama friends in the media and elsewhere had warned for days that if Obama chose Hillary for vice president in the face of bullying, he would be robbing himself of his “manhood.”
Obama won the primaries by more than 200 delegates; Clinton the popular vote by 18 million-plus to just under 18 million for Obama.
But reality for Clinton might not be found in the delegate count. If she turns back into campaign mode, it will come if the July or August polls turn sharply against Obama versus John McCain. And, of course, it would help for someone to add another straw to the camel’s back of Obama’s dubious associations: Reverends Wright and Pfleger; terror bombers from the 1960s William Ayer and wife Bernadine Dehorn; indicted Chicago machine crony Tony Rezko, etc.
Rowdy conventions, as Bill and Hillary well understand, can be stampeded away from front-runners and even crown dark horse nominees in back room deals.
For this primary, the potent Democratic Party’s combination of near total solidarity among black people, union members, older voters, elites, Jewish voters and left wingers – the old Roosevelt Coalition – has been splintered, leaving Clinton closer to the American center than Obama.
The Clintons seemed to have realized around Super Tuesday they were never going to get the black vote, so a revised plan was needed.
Black voters might be lost, but women, Latinos, blue collar whites and older voters in Texas, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Kentucky more than made up the slack. Had Reverend Wright and Pfleger popped up before Iowa, Clinton would have coasted, black vote or no.
Hope has its place in campaigns, but in the end, Hillary’s highest appeal, if she really wants the nomination, involves fear.
She has to spread fear among nervous superdelegates, many of whom are up for election themselves in November. She must make Democrat candidates more afraid of angry women, Latinos, the white working class and older voters than of black retaliation.
A winning strategy would involve a waiting game until Obama picks someone other than Clinton for his veep.
Then she has the peg to accuse him of selfishly disregarding a “dream team” opportunity to beat John McCain in November.
Obama, of course, could practice a bit of political jujitsu himself by quickly naming her to the ticket, then dumping her near convention time on an issue or issues newly revealed from the screening process – the vetting.
Where might such information be found? There is 20 years of Clinton shady dealing in the Republican playbook alone.
Mind games.
May 2008
