Thursday, June 05, 2008
Clinton to Suspend Historic Candidacy
Hillary Clinton sent a memo to her supporters informing them that she was going to suspend her candidacy and endorse Obama.
For now Obama has clinched the nomination. There is always tomorrow...and supers could always come to their senses.
After all, it wasn't that Obama ran a brilliant campaign; or voters preferred him over Hillary. Nope, it came down to the double-crossing of supers, exactly as The New York Times writes:
For now Obama has clinched the nomination. There is always tomorrow...and supers could always come to their senses.
After all, it wasn't that Obama ran a brilliant campaign; or voters preferred him over Hillary. Nope, it came down to the double-crossing of supers, exactly as The New York Times writes:
By mid-March, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign knew it had a problem with what it had once assumed was a reliable firewall — its support among superdelegates.
Neither candidate could win the nomination without superdelegates, but her "commanding lead...at the start of the contests — she was about 100 ahead of Mr. Obama...dwindled by mid-March, to 12."
Of all the assumptions the Clinton campaign made going into the race, its support among the party establishment seemed like a safe bet. Many of the superdelegates, who help pick the nominee at the convention in August, came of age during the Bill Clinton presidency. Many were personal Clinton loyalists, cultivated to help deliver the vote.
But the Obama campaign convinced many superdelegates that
they should follow the voters’ will in making their endorsements. To the puzzlement and increasing frustration of the Clinton camp, few flowed her way.Her campaign never recovered from its string of losses through February. By the time she started winning again, with Ohio on March 4, her support among superdelegates hardly inched up.
Never mind that Obama lost practically every primary, except his home state of Illinois; or that he lost every key swing state. It was the will of the people except when it wasn't. Like in the case of Kennedy, Richardson and others.
David Broder of The Washington Post is dead-on with his analysis:
Obama limped into the nomination as a vulnerable and somewhat diminished politician. After winning 11 primaries and caucuses in a row in February, his magic touch seemed to depart him. He lost the knack for winning the heart of the Democratic coalition, working families that look for help in meeting the economic challenges of their everyday lives. White, Hispanic, middle-aged or older, many of these voters had strong associations with Clinton and many questions about the commitments that lay behind Obama's sweeping, reformist generalizations.Absolutely mind-boggling... May the supers reap in November what they've sown.
// posted by Howling Latina @ 4:16 AM 
