Harold Ickes hints: Clinton may drop out

Here is the reality. Hillary Clinton’s campaign is in an uphill fight. She has gone dirty negative. There are very negative pieces out there and I refuse to provide the link.

Negative mailers and smear email aside, you can tell a campaign is breaking up when senior advisers go public
with inside disagreements. Not a first. But this is very interesting:

From The Swampsite sponsored by The Chicago Tribune

Ignore the header as you will read because the text is to the contrary.

Optimistic Ickes pans Penn’s pessimism

It’s no secret that Hillary Clinton’s tactical commando Harold Ickes isn’t crazy about the campaign’s top strategist Mark Penn, and a little of that contempt peeked through during this morning’s Christian Science Monitor breakfast in Washington.

“Many people and many pollsters – including our chief strategist–I daresay, [thought] we we had no chance of winning in New Hampshire,” Ickes, who is working to head off the loss of Clinton super delegates, told reporters. Penn’s internal polling, insiders say, showed Clinton losing by double digits.

When he was asked a question about Clinton’s broader strategy, he demurred, quipping, “I’m not the chief strategist — I’m the assistant sanitation commissioner… I’m not in the high realms.”

Ickes message was for observers to stop their “rush to judgment” about the state of Clinton’s candidacy and her overall chances pending the make-or-break March 4th showdown in Texas and Ohio. Echoing Bill Clinton’s recent comments, Ickes hinted the former first lady might drop out if she loses either.

“If we lose in Texas and Ohio, Mrs. Clinton will have to make her decision as to whether she moves forward,” he said.

[.]

(emphasis added)

But it’s not just inside polling that’s the problem with this campaign. As we’ve read morale is low. A winning camp’s senior adviser does not go public in this way.

Recent Polling Data:

Vermont and Rhode Island: Rasmussen Feb. 25

Ohio: dueling polls

Univ. Cincinati – Clinton leads  8 points – Feb. 25.

Clinton 47% Obama 39%  

Univ. Quinnipac -Clintons leads 11 points. Feb. 25 PDF

Clinton 51% Obama 40%

Texas:  Clinton 46% Obama 45% – Rasmussen Feb 25

Polls show Obama leading among Latinos – aired on NPR as I write – the discussion is on the status of the Hillary’s campaign and her going negative over the weekend.  

Oh My, a Texas landslide win does not appear – well just let’s say, unless there’s a calamity,  “The light will not come down, celestial choirs will not be singing..”   Yes, I xeroxed that line.

So Robert Novak asks,

Who Will Bell Hillary?