Sunday 1 June 2008

Wishful thinking

The Puerto Rico victory speech by Madame Hillary didn’t sound like it was coming from someone ready to throw in the towel next Tuesday. She rehashed the lie that she’s leading in the popular vote (by assuming Obama got zero votes in Michigan while she was breaking the candidates’ agreement by leaving her name on the ballot). She also keeps hammering away like Chuckie the Killer Doll on the theme of ‘the people have spoken,’ threatens to challenge the weekend compromise over Michigan and Florida, casting herself as the Fanny Lou Hamer of 2008 fighting the segregationists, and insists that no winner will emerge from the final two primaries on June 3.

Pretty much everyone projects onto Senator Clinton their assumptions about what a dignified second-place finish would require from a normal politician and studiously ignores the concrete signals emanating from her. Perhaps the punditocracy knows something we don’t, but if we listen to the actual words spoken and the clear sentiments and worldview lurking behind them, there is no reason to believe that she will permit the party to start to concentrate on November any time soon—if ever.

Clinton is still capable of ripping the Democratic Party apart and everything she says and does suggests that that’s where she’s headed. The superdelegates and the party poobahs can frustrate her nomination, but they can’t stop her from strapping on a suicide belt and heading to the convention with it. Don’t say you weren’t warned—by her.

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