From CNN
…Clinton vowed to soldier on, telling supporters at a rally in Indiana “it’s full-speed on to the White House.”
I guess Hillary must believe that Obama will offer her the veep slot to fashion that so-called “Dream Ticket” so beloved of Andrew Sullivan. Far more likely is a deal with Obama for her to leave the race if he’ll agree to pay off her campaign debt. Yet even that seems unlikely to occur in the immediate future. I take her at her word. The reality of having lost the race has been staring her in the face for weeks. A less stubborn person, a person less determined to win at all costs, even the cost of tearing her party apart, would have conceded long ago. We all know that if Obama had been in Clinton’s situation he would have been forced to “suspend his campaign” back in March, if not earlier. Certainly there would have been no push by Rush Limbaugh to keep his candidacy alive. His “ditto head” audience wouldn’t tolerate a call to vote for a black man, not when they already had the candidate they wanted to face in the general in the catbird seat, bearing the much despised Clinton brand.
So now we must wait for someone to tell her it’s over. My guess is that only the money people can really do that by refusing any further calls to fund her campaign, either directly or indirectly through “independent” 527 organizations. Money talks, even (or perhaps especially) for the most divisive politician in America. Indeed, Clinton bet her candidacy in Indiana and North Carolina on a plea to toss a few pennies to the peons with her gas tax holiday, as raw and desperate an attempt of pandering to the voters as I’ve seen in quite a while.
Yes, even her promise of an election year bribe to the electorate fell flat. It didn’t get her the big win in Indiana she was hoping for, nor did it “change the game” in North Carolina where Obama won by double digits, anyway. Indeed, one can argue that most people saw through her extreme makeover as a just an “ordinary Jane” like them, the stalwart defender of working class values, the woman who can drink John McCain under the table if she has to, as the papier-mâché creation of Mark Penn and/or her other spin doctors. Having a long history of support for anti-working class measures such as NAFTA will do that for you.
So my hat’s off to the voters in Indiana and North Carolina. Despite the relentless drumbeat of negativity from the Clinton campaign and the media against Obama, despite the endless re-rehashing of the Rev. Wright saga, despite the ginned up claims that the poorest candidate in the field is the effete elitist, despite Limbaugh’s Operation Chaos’ “get out the vote for the woman you love to hate” effort, enough of them saw through the bullshit.
