Oh this pisses me off! Please read the whole thing.
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The Clintons -- ever the consummate pols -- know that the likelihood of convincing the vast majority of remaining superdelegates to side with her over Obama -- who leads in pledged delegates, popular vote (excluding Florida and Michigan) and total contests won -- is slim.
But one of the hallmarks of the Clinton brand is the ability to live to fight another day. That means, within the context of this campaign, it's necessary to make the strongest case possible about why Senator Clinton would be the strongest candidate between now and the end of the primaries on June 3. Then, in all likelihood, Clinton bows out of the race and spends the next five months working as hard as possible for Obama.
The Fix chatted with a number of unaligned Democratic strategists about this theory and, to a person, they agreed that Clinton's best course once she decides to end her bid is to become Obama's top advocate.
"I think that when Obama is the nominee you will see Clinton campaign vigorously for him because she needs the 'healing' coefficient with Democratic insiders who view her as hurting the party more than she needs the 'I told you so' coefficient," said Democratic pollster John Anzalone. "She is already viewed as a bad sport on the playing field, and she has lost supporters and insiders because of it. She needs to repair that and she can do that by being a big booster in the fall."
Clinton need only look as far as the last presidential election for guidance. After losing a bitter battle for the Republican nomination in 2000, McCain became an ardent Bush surrogate during the 2004 campaign -- rehabbing his image among party insiders in expectation of a return run in 2008.
Lo and behold, when he ran for the nomination this cycle, McCain was viewed as a far more acceptable choice for establishment types who eight years before would never have chosen him. It helped McCain's case that even many ardent Bush backers in 2000 were afflicted with a bit of buyer's remorse eight years later when they were faced with McCain again.
History is not as kind to Democratic retreads, but the truth of the matter is that Clinton's best hope to be president depends on three factors:
In the short term, she must continue to make the case that not only would she be the stronger candidate against McCain but that in not picking her Democrats are going against historical patterns.
In the middle term, she must transform herself into a fervent Obama advocate -- leaving no question that she wants to see the Illinois senator elected president. As Matt Bennett, a former Clinton administration official, put it: "If she reveals that she's rooting against the Democrats in any way in the general, she would become a pariah."
Finally, in the long term, Clinton needs to hope that if Obama is defeated (and we have ABSOLUTELY no evidence to believe she would like to see that scenario come to pass), the after-action report within the party jibes with the argument she is making in the final days of the primary: That Democrats rushed to judgment by picking the fresh face rather than the reliable warrior, and that the big, Rust Belt states were always the crucial battleground in the race versus McCain.
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Link:
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/thefix/2008/05/the_i_told_you_so_factor.html:mad:
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