How do these two quotes jibe with each other?
“I have no intention of stopping until we finish what we started and until we see what happens in the next 10 contests and until we resolve Florida and Michigan. And if we don’t resolve it, we’ll resolve it at the convention—that’s what the credentials committees are for.”- Hillary Clinton, Interview with the Washington Post, published March 30, 2008.
Top Clinton campaign aide Harold Ickes doesn’t deny [Rahm] Emanuel’s political skills, but he says there won’t be any blood feud to referee. “There’s all this apocalyptic talk about a bloody convention,” Ickes tells NEWSWEEK, “a raging fight over credentials—some reports have gone so far as to analogize the possibility of Chicago in 1968. This is just overwrought hype … I think this issue will be settled well before the convention.”
Maybe it will all be settled before the convention, but how is it ‘overwrought hype’ to talk about a credentials fight when Hillary Clinton is not only threatening just that, but her entire strategy is completely dependent upon it?
Clinton advocate Governor Ed Rendell (D-PA) argued on Meet the Press this morning that young voters, Obama supporters, and the African-American community will mostly come home to Clinton as a nominee even if she is selected over Obama without winning the most states, having the most pledged delegates, or claiming the popular vote. Rendell asserted that Democratic voters would be persuaded by an argument that Clinton polls better against McCain in a few key battleground states. That’s not a persuasive argument. It’s magical thinking.
Newsweek asks, “Who will tell Hillary Clinton that the time has come to fold her tent?” But Clinton insists “I have no intention of stopping until we finish what we started.” The key error in Rendell’s reasoning is that he fails to acknowledge that current polls that show Clinton doing better against McCain, in e.g. Ohio, take no account of the disastrous alienation a Clinton nomination would inevitably engender in young voters, Obama supporters, and the African-American community. There is no realistic way for Clinton to win the nomination in a way that is seen as legitimate by the majority of Democrats. Anyone that ponders the future must wrap their mind around that basic unavoidable reality.
