It’s getting hard to figure out exactly what Hillary Clinton’s motives are at this point.
Mathematically, the odds that she can win this nomination fight fair and square are astronomically high; even with big wins in the remaining primaries, she is likely to finish with fewer pledged delegates, and fewer popular votes than Barack Obama.
And yet, as she said again last night in an interview on Fox, she intends to take this fight all the way to the convention:
The Democratic race is a “long way from being over,” Hillary Clinton told FOX News on Wednesday, and she has no qualms about taking the primary fight all the way to the convention floor.
In a sit-down interview with FOX News’ Greta Van Susteren, which aired Wednesday night, Clinton said not to write her candidacy’s obituary yet, even though she’s trailing Barack Obama by 157 pledged delegates with opportunities dwindling to make up that gap.
“Sixty-two percent said let it go on,” Clinton said, referring to a new Rasmussen survey that found that portion of Democrats aren’t ready for either candidate to leave the race. “That is what people are telling me. That is what we have to do. Let the voters have a chance to be heard. Nobody should be writing obituaries on this race, because it is a long way from being over.
And, as partial justification for her strategy, she brings up the old canards of Florida and Michigan:
Clinton said, barring a resolution on Florida and Michigan, the fight goes to convention.
“You know, you can always go to the convention. That’s what credential fights are for,” he said. “Let’s have the Democratic party go on record against seating the Michigan and Florida delegations three months before the general election? I don’t think that will happen. I think they will be seated. So that’s where we’re headed if we don’t get this worked out.”
Meanwhile, her top supporters are threatening House Speaker Nancy Pelosi:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A group of prominent Hillary Clinton donors sent a letter to House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday asking her to retract her comments on superdelegates and stay out of the Democratic fight over their role in the presidential race.
The 20 prominent Clinton supporters told Pelosi she should “clarify” recent statements to make it clear superdelegates — nearly 800 party insiders and elected officials who are free to back any candidate — could support the candidate they think would be the best nominee.
Pelosi has not publicly endorsed either Clinton or Barack Obama in their hotly contested White House battle, but she recently said superdelegates should support whoever emerges from the nomination contests with the most pledged delegates — which appears almost certain to be Obama.
“This is an untenable position that runs counter to the party’s intent in establishing superdelegates in 1984,” the letter from the wealthy Clinton backers said.
“Superdelegates, like all delegates, have an obligation to make an informed, individual decision about whom to support and who would be the party’s strongest nominee,” said the letter signed by some of Clinton’s biggest fund raisers.
In other words, these supporters are laying the groundwork for the idea that the superdelegates should go against the will of the party and pick someone other than the nominee who actually got the most support. If that’s not the start of a scenario that will lead to the most contentious convention in 40 years, I don’t know what is.
So what’s Clinton up to here ? Is so blinded by the lust for power that she doesn’t care how she gets it, even it means turning the factions of the Democratic Party against themselves ? Or, is something else going on here ?
Andrew Sullivan detects a more sinister strategy:
Her goal is to defeat Obama by destroying him in the next month or two, not by making a positive argument about herself. By ramping up his negatives, she also has an added threat to the superdelegates: nominate him and you’ll elect McCain. And if she cannot destroy him this time, and he gets the nomination, she will have so anathematized him with a segment of voters that McCain will beat him, and she gets to say “told you so” and run again in 2012. The new Gallup finding shows that it is working. It is Rove-Morris politics at its purest; and she and her husband are as skilled at it as anyone.
If that’s what’s going on, then this woman and her husband are even more Machiavellian than I thought. And they must be stopped.
H/T: Liberal Values
