Is Hillary Clinton really still campaigning for President, or just going through the motions?
BATH, South Dakota (Reuters) - Sitting on board Sen. Hillary Clinton’s campaign plane are the remnants of a colorful balloon replica of the candidate, once nearly life-size but now almost deflated and shriveled.
Like the once cheery caricature, the former first lady soldiers on, but her campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination is on the down-swing.
Crowds are shrinking, media attention is waning, supporters are jumping ship and calls are growing for her to drop out and help unite the Democrats behind Barack Obama.
(…)
While the candidate once campaigned relentlessly with four or five events a day, she now has two or three. The number of press spokesmen with her is down to one from two, and the press corps barely fills one bus when once it filled two.
As she steps from her plane, Clinton smiles and waves but no crowd actually awaits her.
Jon Henke wonders why Hillary is still running and comes up with three reasons:
- She has a deal to pay off her campaign debts if she continues.
- She has a bombshell story she can drop on Barack Obama, and she believes it will be enough to swing the superdelegates.
- She believes that the competitive organizing efforts of both her campaign and the Obama campaign in additional Primary states will help Democrats win the general election in November.
I’ve got to think it’s a combination of 1 and 3 at this point, although the idea that anything she’s doing right now is going to help Obama in the fall is really quite laughable. If she had a bombshell on Obama, you would think they would’ve used it by now, no ?
The candidate herself is putting this spin on it:
“There’s a lot of people who say, ‘Well, you know, we should just wrap this up.’ Well, I’ve never been impatient with democracy,” she said. “I think actually letting people vote is, on balance, a really good thing and has served our country well over many, many years.”
Umm, well, okay. I guess it’s nice to let people vote even though we already know how this is going to turn out, but if she really means it, she’ll drop out on June 4th after the last vote is counted.
Right ?
Don’t bet on it.
