The point's been hammered long enough: Hillary Clinton can't win. Even under the best-case scenario, Clinton is mathematically doomed. You can give her the lion's share of the uncommitted superdelegates, give her victories in all six remaining primaries, and even seat the delegations from Florida and Michigan under their current allocation, and she still comes up short.
And it's not as if no one has realized it. Members of the media, her colleagues, and even some of her supporters have already resigned themselves to the inevitable fate that Barack Obama simply outperformed the former First Lady. And as for the hundreds of soldiers inside the Clinton War Room, they're smart people: it can't be lost on them that they're laboring hard on what is essentially a lost cause.
Senator Diane Feinstein of California, and ardent Clinton-backer from the start, had an interesting, yet subtly telling comment the night after Obama's victory in North Carolina seemed to seal his fate as the eventual nominee. "I, as you know, have great fondness and great respect for Senator Clinton and I'm very loyal to her," she said. "Having said that, I'd like to talk with her and get her view on the rest of the race and what the strategy is." In other words- nice lady, but where is all of this going?
Clinton persists blindly in her quest for the nomination, even as she reads the plainly apparent writing on the wall that tells her she's not going to win. So the question remains, what could possibly be her reason for refusing to quit?
Some suggested that Clinton's motivation arises out of downright sabotage. In eight years, Clinton will be just a few ticks shy of 70 years old. It's hard enough for a woman to run for president. How hard would it be for a woman who be considered by some to be elderly? Sure, many men have done it. John McCain is a septuagenarian right now. But how much more difficult would Clinton's road have been if she'd had to battle not only the specter of her gender, but her age as well?
If Obama wins this time around, he'll run again in four years. Unless he's bungled the presidency beyond repair, he'll be a shoe-in for the nomination. But if he loses, a new door opens for Clinton. She parades back onto the main stage as the vindicated candidate who was snubbed four years prior, but is ready to stand up and fight for the party. And at just 64, her age won't be much more of an issue than it is right now.
Could that possibly be? Could Clinton really just be trying to drag Obama down with her sinking ship to give her the edge to run again in four years? Maybe.
Others have floated the idea that Clinton is campaigning for vice president. Again, that's a possibility. Certainly, with her support almost as strong as that of Obama, she's made the case that there is a large contingent in the Democratic Party that wants to see her in the White House.
But if that's the case, she's gone about it in the wrong way. If she really wanted the VP slot, she would never have gotten as negative as she has, to the point where she's effectively damning the very ticket she hopes to join. Sure, an Obama-Clinton ticket might have gone a long way in "healing" the rift in the party torn by...well, Obama and Clinton. But when the vitriol of the fight has raised questions as to whether or not the candidates have even the slightest degree of personal or professional respect for one another, it's hard to see how the damage of the past eight or so months could be undone by putting the two of them on the same ticket.
Plus, Clinton has to know that with her baggage, she's be last on Obama's list for VP selections. She wanted the office badly. It's hard to see how she's not going to be Obama's worst nightmare of a backseat driver. Or worse, her husband, who eight years ago was the most powerful man in the world, will be sidelined, but close enough to the action to get involved. For Obama, that's a problem of too many cooks in the kitchen.
Or maybe she's just plain old staying in to give everyone a chance to vote...but there's nothing really noble in that. John Edwards dropped out months ago, not because he was robbing the people of choice, but because the more important task at hand was to unify around a candidate and allow the party to move forward. Clinton's continued candidacy is not in the name of Democracy.
There are a million other possibilities that wouldn't even get off the ground: maybe she's building a third party run? No way. She wouldn't get anywhere near enough votes to top Obama, but she would certainly get enough to bring him down. Maybe she's campaigning for a role in his cabinet? Probably not, for the same reasons she won't be the VP. Maybe she's looking for an increased role in the party? If she is, she's going about it in a way that's making a lot of people very angry with her.
