Field goal or fumble?
Jeff Parker/Florida Today
Apparently Hillary Clinton's most loyal supporters in Congress did an intervention Wednesday, and now there are plans for her to concede and endorse Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination on Saturday. Maybe...
That's, of course, what all the Clinton "insiders" were saying she was going to do Tuesday night, and instead she gave another victory speech after Obama had clinched the delegate count. The Clinton people have been playing the media like Lucy setting up the football for Charlie Brown. Oops! Hah-hah! Better luck next time, sucker!
The New York Democratic delegation still couldn't wait to throw their support to Obama ,so they gathered on the steps of the Capitol today to "endorse" Hillary for "endorsing" Obama — or for at least saying she would do so.
So what will happen Saturday? Who knows, when you have advocates like the spokeswoman on MSNBC Thursday morning who was saying that Hillary had the power of 18 million voters behind her, and she could call the tune on the vice president choice: "If she wants it, he can't refuse her." Since Obama so far does not appear to have plans to attend the big endorsement Saturday, he may be wary of getting into one of these Lucy moments, too.
When I see grizzled old warhorses like Charlie Rangel, her New York colleague and chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, shaking his head and wondering publicly what the heck the Clinton campaign could be thinking, it really makes me wonder how politically savvy Hillary Clinton really is.
We assume that because she was married to Mr. Political Animal, had been First Lady and was elected to the Senate, she MUST be politically savvy herself. But much of her life has been spent as a lawyer in the private sector, and her White House years were mostly spent in ceremonial duties — except for spearheading the health care reform project, which she made political hash out of.
Her election to the Senate in New York? With her name recognition and her bumbling opponent (filling in when Rudy Giuliani got cancer), that required little political acumen. As for Bill — his "help" for her in this campaign has made it clear that he has lost his political touch.
Her end game couldn't have been more politically wrong-headed. In retrospect, it seems either that her team headed by campaign manager Terry McAuliffe was spectacularly incompetent, or that she stubbornly ignored good advice right until the end. (And beyond the end, as we're seeing.) Say what you will about George W. Bush as a president, as a campaigner he listened to people who appeared to know what they were doing.
The football will be teed up again Saturday. Field goal or fumble? Stay tuned.