Monday, March 17, 2008

Why Is She Still Running?

The math looks well nigh impossible. The superdelegates are leaving her, she has an almost insuperable deficit in the popular vote, ditto for the pledged delegates, and has lost the total number of contests by almost 2 to 1. So why is she still in it? It seems to me her strategy has 2 parts. The first is to persuade the supers that Obama is unelectable. Accomplish this, and those supers that have already committed to Obama will switch their votes and swing the nomination to HRC. There's all kinds of risk to this approach - it would require a staggering amount of mudslinging and negative campaigning which is in direct contrast to the Obama campaign relatively mud-free run. The costs of this strategy can't be understated.

If it worked, she would have effectively split the party by smashing it and picking up the pieces. Winning this way would result in a useless nomination as the perceptions of her within the party would be fatally impacted. We already know how independents and Republicans feel about her, any split within the party is instantly fatal. Call it the Vietnam village strategy - destroying the village with bombs in order to save it.

If it didn't work, then Obama as the general election nominee is now damaged goods. He would have been attacked incessantly by Democrats for close to a year, and would then have to turn around and face the Republican attack machine.

Of course, there could be an implicit strategy here to intentionally cause Obama to fail in the general. This saves the date (2012) for the Clinton's to swoop in and save the day. To summarize, from the Clinton's perspective it's not exactly win-win. (call is not-lose, not-lose). From the perspective of the Democratic Party (i.e., 50% of the American people), it's a big Screw You. Classy stuff.

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