Sunday, March 30, 2008

Clinton Vows To Stay in Race To Convention

Hillary Clinton and her supporters have given their answer to Dean's plea that this contest be brought to a close by early June:

In her most definitive comments to date on the subject, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton sought Saturday to put to rest any notion that she will drop out of the presidential race, pledging in an interview to not only compete in all the remaining primaries but also continue until there is a resolution of the disqualified results in Florida and Michigan.
The truth is that there is already a resolution of the results in Florida and Michigan, they were disqualified, as everyone - including Hillary - accepted at the time. For her to now argue that an election of which she previously stated, "It's clear, this election they're having is not going to count for anything," MUST now count reveals the shamelessness of her position.

And it's a shamelessness which now spells out future attacks the Republican party might consider should Hillary not be given what she wants.

A day after Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean urged the candidates to end the race by July 1, Clinton defied that call by declaring that she will take her campaign all the way to the Aug. 25-28 convention if necessary, potentially setting up the prolonged and divisive contest that party leaders are increasingly anxious to avoid.

"I know there are some people who want to shut this down and I think they are wrong," Clinton said in an interview during a campaign stop here Saturday. "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 credentials committees are for.

"We cannot go forward until Florida and Michigan are taken care of, otherwise the eventual nominee will not have the legitimacy that I think will haunt us," said the senator from New York. "I can imagine the ads the Republican Party and John McCain will run if we don't figure out how we can count the votes in Michigan and Florida."

It is now becoming imperative that the super delegates declare their voting intentions as soon as they can - and that they vote according to the will of the electorate - as this appears to be the only way to stop this woman and her supporters from dragging the Democratic party through the mud and sullying their chances come November.

Clinton's game is becoming increasingly bitter. She has threatened to have her backers withdraw funding from the party unless she gets her way, she has announced her plan to ignore the delegate count, super delegates who announce their support for Obama have been labelled as "Judas", and she has generally behaved in a way which has alienated huge swathes of the Democratic party.

Her response to all of this is that she doesn't care and she has every intention of keeping going even though she has almost no chance of winning.

The best scenario that even her most rabid supporters can come up with - and it's highly unlikely that even this is remotely possible - is that she might win the popular vote - by this amount:
Under a scenario that includes the Florida and Michigan votes for Clinton, gives Obama all of the uncommitted Michigan votes, estimates the votes for all the caucus states and includes the Washington primary, Clinton wins by about 16,000 votes -- or about a tenth of one percent....
At this point she would still be behind Obama in the delegate count, but the plan - and I'm flattering it to call it such a thing - is that Hillary could claim victory based on the fact that one tenth of one percent of the voters, having included contests that everyone - including Hillary - have accepted as disqualified, would give her an overall lead in the number of votes cast. At this point Hillary would expect the super delegates to hand victory to her. Marvel comics couldn't come up with a scenario as fantastical as this one.

It's simply astounding that her campaign has sunk to such an extent that intelligent people are forced to scuttle around in the gutter holding up such unlikely scenarios as a reason for Hillary to continue in what is blatantly a lost cause. And yet that is precisely what is happening.

Hillary and her supporters have simply lost their minds. I mean seriously, does anyone regard that scenario as even remotely possible? The very fact that she has accepted that she can no longer win the delegate count ought to tell everyone all they need to know about what has happened here. Hillary has lost.

She and her supporters are now reduced to compiling ridiculous scenarios which simply won't happen in a million years, whilst simultaneously issuing dire threats to the party should anyone attempt to deviate her from her suicidal course.

She and her supporters should be ashamed. One should have dignity in defeat, but Hillary is showing none. Instead, she is simply refusing to accept what is a statistical reality, and is, once again, moving the goalposts over how this contest should be decided.

This is now becoming simply shameful.

Click title for full article.

No comments: