Missing Link

Why Can't HIllary Quit?



Posted: Wednesday, June 04, 2008

by

What does Hillary want and why doesn't she just say what it is? I'm sure she wants to be president but for now that boat has sailed. Last night in her speech, Hillary did everything except gracefully bow out of the race. It is the most bizarre spectacle I have lived to see in politics. Witnessing someone lose a race and then decline to say, "I Lost" has to rank right up there with other politicians who refused to accept reality. Examples are Nixon saying, "I'm not a crook", Bill Clinton declaring, "I never had sex with that woman" and the infamous "I have a wide stance on the pot" (paraphrase of Larry Craig). Whether Hillary chooses to acknowledge it or not, the fat lady sang yesterday. Hillary's campaign is dead and her candidacy is now a footnote in history.

The argument presented by Hillary and her campaign for carrying forward this ghost candidacy is that there are many voters who were committed to her. Every political campaign leaves a block of voters with a losing candidate and the loser always says, I am the loser and I am going away now, so good luck and goodbye. Or words to that effect. Nobody in Hillary's campaign seems to know how to say it.

I saw Howard Wolfson, the Clinton campaign communications director on the Today Show this morning. It amazes me how much these political lackeys have to personally compromise to be part of a political campaign. Host Matt Lauer asked him directly, "Yes or No, did Barack Obama obtain the delegates he needed to secure the nomination yesterday?" The guy didn't even have the courtesy to say, "I am going to leave that question for Hillary to answer", he simply began to spinning about Hillary did this and Hillary did that. It was a painfully embarrassing thing to watch the man work so hard at giving a non answer. It was like someone had a steel vise on parts of him and I can't imagine that he has any further need for an athletic supporter.

After all is said and done I suppose that Hillary ought to be allowed to end her campaign in a way that she sees fit. But politics demands that politicians be in public who they are not always in private. Hillary is a master of that art; if politics were martial arts she would be Bruce Lee. Perhaps the longer Hillary carries on this ghost candidacy, the more the curtain will be withdrawn and the person she really is will be evident.

There is after all no good reason for failing to gracefully acknowledge that Barack won and she lost. That she did not do so is revealing an interesting facet of her character. That she is having such a difficult time stepping back is either about being a bull in a political china shop or the result of a stubborn inability to accept reality. I am not sure that in the end Hillary is going to be happy that she allowed the curtain to be drawn back even a little.

Just a simple curmudgeon observing life in the USA.  Cranky posts to his blog regularly at http://crankyblog.com.

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