archived: 6 - 12 Apr, 2008         Back                 Next

UPDATED:  APR 9, 2008 

“WHY DOES HILLARY KEEP RUNNING?” 

Day-by-day the pressure builds on the Clintons to quit the race for the Democratic Party nomination for President.  It does become more obvious everyday that it is the Clintons who are running, not just Hillary.  Sort of like McCain is running for the third GW Bush term as some observers characterize it.  It may be that by the time you read this, they will have caved in to that pressure.  But I very much doubt it.  For despite the fact that Hillary has virtually no chance of winning the nomination, the operative word here is “virtually.”   

As is widely known, she still has a chance, small as it might be, if: a) she can get the rules, under which the Florida and Michigan delegations would not be seated at the convention as they now stand, changed; and/or b) she can reverse the growing tide of super-delegates who are declaring for Sen. Obama; and/or c) some irrefutable and totally crippling information about Sen. Obama comes out (you know, at the level of the possibility that the charges being leveled, off-the-main-screen so far, against a certain Presidential candidate that when he was held prisoner in a certain country his nick-name was “songbird”) although if the Clintons had it you can be sure that it would be out by now; and/or d) she can persuade elected, committed Obama delegates to change their votes to her, at the Convention; and /or e) she can persuade the Democratic Party that its nominee should be chosen not in the usual way, through state-by-state primaries choosing committed delegates, plus the votes of the super-delegates, but rather through some “special” primary among so far un-committed super-delegates, or by the total of the popular votes in all of the Democratic primaries.  This latter approach would of course in some states include the votes of anyone who wanted to vote in that primary, including Republicans mobilized by Rush Limbaugh’s self-styled “Operation Chaos” to vote for Hillary because he and every other Republican operative knows that McCain would have a much easier time beating her Obama (an item which recent polls have confirmed as the view of those polled, of both parties). 

And so this column is about why she keeps running.  Right now it looks to me as if Hillary, the way she is playing it (racism, personal attacks on Obama and/or surrogates, “oh poor me,” “kill the messenger,” and etc.), would rather get the nomination through the variety of machinations listed above and lose the general election (which she almost surely would), than have Obama get the nomination with a very good chance of winning the general election. I am not the only observer who thinks that given the turnouts in the Democratic primaries and caucuses in the Red states where he has won, he has something of a chance of winning a few of them in the general election as well, which happening would almost assure him of victory.  But why would Clinton actually want Obama to lose, should he indeed get the nomination?  Stay tuned until the end of this column. 

Listen first to what a few other folk are saying about the Clintons’ politics and what is happening at this time.  PM Carpenter, a daily columnist for BuzzFlash, recently said (http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/carpenter/016): 

“Hillary reminded us that the war has produced exactly what progressives predicted in 2002 that it would produce. Mrs. Clinton was a knowing voice in the institutional body that handed Mr. Bush a blank check to prosecute this militarily and economically sapping, security-damaging, life-taking and human-disfiguring war, nevertheless she knowingly sided with the neocons -- and all for the Scoop Jackson-, Joe Lieberman- and Ronald Reagan-Democrat vote” (otherwise known as the prime vote and policy targets of the Democratic Leadership Council).

Brent Budowsky, himself a Center-Right Democrat, had this to say (http://pundits.thehill.com/2008/03/17/hillarys-plan-to-elect-mccain-and-a-right-wing-supreme-court/): “My personal opinion is that Hillary would rather elect a one-term Republican of advanced age than a two-term young Democratic leader as president. Of course, the corollary of the Hillary scheme is that a President McCain would give America the most anti-woman, anti-worker, anti-environment Supreme Court in history. But that is not Hillary’s concern in her campaign of personal attack and destruction.”

Andy Borowitz (for the uninitiated one of the best political humorists currently writing)  weighed in with this comment (“Breaking News,” Borowitz Report, March 30, 2008): “Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton stunned voters at a town hall meeting in Erie, Pennsylvania today by telling them that she was prepared to stay in the nomination fight for an additional century. ‘How much longer will I stay in the race?’ she responded to a voter’s question. ‘Fifty years? How about one hundred years?’ When asked to clarify, Sen. Clinton replied, ‘I’ll stay in this race for a thousand years. A million years. A billion years.’ Sen. Clinton added that she was refusing to announce an exit strategy from the race because ‘that would send the wrong message to the enemy.’ The New York senator’s comments echoed a strategy outlined in a recently leaked internal campaign memo, which calls for her to remain in the race long after the Democratic National Convention, even if Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill) becomes the party’s official nominee.”  Well, if Mark Karlin, Editor-Publisher of BuzzFlash, and I are right, and Hillary is actually angling for the Vice-Presidential nomination on the McCain ticket (http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/jonas/105), Borowitz could prove to have been a visionary. 

But enough kidding around.  What is really going on here?  Let’s consider the possible explanations for just why it is that she is hanging on in the campaign. 

1.       She and her advisors really think that she can still win the nomination.   However, they can count as well as anyone.  So unless they have some bombshell to throw at Obama, much more explosive than the Rev. Wright (and as noted above, if they had one, one can presume that they would already have thrown it), that cannot explain it. 

2.       Her ambition and ego-mania and those of her husband are so over-weaning that neither of them can keep them under control.  So it is ambition and ego that just keeps pushing them along, come what may.  Possibly, but both of these people have through almost the whole of their public lives shown what control-freaks they are (and yes, Monica is the exception to that rule).  Another unlikely explanation. 

3.       She is positioning herself to run in 2012, should Obama lose.  Given the extent to which she has antagonized the Party leadership as well as major elements of the rank-and-file, and she knows that that antagonism is becoming more extensive every day, this too is an unlikely explanation. 

4.       A variation of 3, she knows that Obama will get the nomination and she wants him to lose so that she can get it in 2012.  This one, on its own, is as unlikely as 3, for the same reason.   

Which brings me to my guess, which is a variation of 4.  She knows that Obama will get the nomination and she wants him to lose alright, but for a much larger reason than giving her a chance at the nomination in 2012, which chance would be a rather thin one.  That larger reason?  To maintain the control of the Democratic Party by the right-wing Democratic Leadership Council, which has effectively run the Democratic Party since the Carter Presidency (Jonas, S.: http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/jonas/016; The Political Junkies, Oct. 20, Nov. 10, 2005, June 1, 8, 2006). 

Way beyond the top Clinton donors who recently threatened the Democratic Party with harm if their candidate was not chosen (http://pol.moveon.org/democracy/o.pl?id=12391-1881637-c1cmTC&t=273), the DLC represents major corporate interests in the United States, such as those that thought that three of the major “accomplishments” of the WJ Clinton Presidency, NAFTA, the WTO expansion, and the proclamation by him in a State of the Union message towards the end  of his first term that the “the era of big government is over,” were just wonderful ideas. If Obama wins the Presidency, the leadership of the Democratic Party will move into the hands of a different group.  Hardly totally anti-corporate, but much more forward-looking in terms of the Constitution, the War, global warming, and etc.  The DLC will be politically dead if that happens.  The Democratic Party will return, in contemporary terms, to its Roosevelt/Truman/Kennedy/Johnson (before Vietnam) roots.  The Clintons are fighting hard to prevent this from happening.  Their sabotage-in-advance of the Obama campaign is not accidental.  And if in the end they fail to prevent him from becoming President?  Their next move will likely be to attempt to split the Party, just as the pro-slavery reactionaries split the Whig Party in the 1850s. 

In summary, as I said in a note on this subject that I sent to Mark Karlin, Editor-Publisher of BuzzFlash (who is now writing frequently on this subject) concerning the Clintons’ recent outrageous statements vis-a-vis McCain: “Clinton knows that she cannot win the Democratic nomination, unless she manages to break a variety of Party rules. If she were to be able to do that, she would, of course continue the tradition of flouting of the rule of law followed by every occupant of the Oval Office since Reagan whose "distinguished" ranks she wishes to join.  (Bill Clinton?  See the Bosnia intervention.)  Given her recent statements about McCain's great foreign policy leadership abilities (apparently those honed in his five years as a POW in Vietnam, for he has had none since), she may be well on her way to “pulling a Lieberman.”  He, who recently “blasted the Democratic Party as protectionist, isolationist, and hyperpartisan” (http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2008/03/31/).

Stranger things have happened in American politics: see the Hayes-Tilden election of 1876.  

Note: This column is based in part on: “Dr. J.'s Commentary: Why Does Hillary Run?” which appeared on BuzzFlash on 04/02/2008 (http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/jonas/108).

________________