After an incredibly disappointing performance in yesterday’s primary, confirmed by the fact that the math makes it simply impossible for her to win the nomination in anything approaching a legitimate manner, it’s time for Hillary Clinton to make a decision:
Does she drop out of the race, or does she continue to throw away her own money on a hopeless cause ?
Highlighting the financial woes of Clinton campaign, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton has lent her campaign more than $6 million over the last month, campaign officials said.
The Senator lent the campaign the money in three installments: $5 million on April 11, $1 million on May 1, and $425,000 on May 5.
Mrs. Clinton is also willing to put more money into her campaign going forward, said Terry McAuliffe, the campaign chairrman.
“Senator Clinton has anted up and is fighting on,” he said.
This is on top of the $ 5 million she loaned the campaign back in February, and is a further sign of the fundraising problems that the campaign was having even before yesterday’s disappointing results, problems that are only likely to get worse.
Today, Hillary Clinton is in the same position that Mitt Romney was in exactly three months ago. Mathematically, there is simply no way she can win, and continuing the race, even if she was willing to use her own money to finance it, will accomplish nothing other than continuing to further bloody-up the Democratic nominee in advance of what promises to be a tough General Election campaign.
Romney looked at the numbers, including personal wealth far greater than Clinton, and decided to do the smart thing.
If anything, the numbers that Hillary faces are even worse than those that that Romney was dealing with after Super Tuesday. At least back then, Romney could have made the argument that the race was still young. In Clinton’s case, though, the race is practically over, and any chance she might have had to catch Obama is now non-existent.
Will Hillary do the same thing ? Will she put her party and her country before her own ambitions ?
Maybe, but if she does it would be decidedly un-Clintonian.
May 7th, 2008 at 11:14 am
Another Split Decision…Means Obama Wins…
Oh yeah, she’s gone, finished, done. As I write this at 8ish PM EST on Tuesday Obama has taken North Carolina by what looks like it will be an impressive margin and Indiana is still too close to call but is leaning towards Clinton who will probably t….
May 7th, 2008 at 11:31 am
The next few weeks should be interesting. If Hillary’s ambition hasn’t passed the threshold into insanity, she’d probably do well to stick it out for a few more primaries, where she’ll likely do well (not that it will matters), not beat up Obama too badly rhetorically, and then, prior to the convention show she’s putting her party before herself and get out of Obama’s way. She winds up looking magnanimous and is good to go in 2012 after Obama goes down in flames this year. She’s also got to make sure not to sign up to be his VP.