Nothing Will Get Hillary Out of the Race

[Better Believe It]

Weekend Edition
April 26 /27, 2008
CounterPunch Diary
Nothing Will Get Hillary Out of the Race
By ALEXANDER COCKBURN

Even though she won by a 9.4 per cent margin and not the blow-out victory in Pennsylvania she was predicting a month ago; even though Barack Obama is decisively ahead in both the delegate count and the national popular vote in all Democratic primaries and caucuses this far; even though polls show Americans think Obama would handle a 2am crisis as well if not better than Hillary; even though other polls show that Obama would fare as well if not better than Hillary against McCain in the fall; even though her campaign is still millions in the red and Obama has nearly $42 million in the bank; even though. . .

And even if – perish the thought – an assassin retained by the Democratic National Committee stepped from behind a shrub and laid Mrs Clinton low, we’d have Bill Clinton insisting that a generic Clinton family candidacy for the Democratic nomination be kept in play, while he simultaneously sought repeal of the 22nd amendment which bars US presidents from serving more than two terms. Clinton’s already on record as saying that while no president should serve three consecutive terms, a two-term president should be able to clamber back into the White House for a third stint after a respite in private life.

Now the primary campaign heads off to Indiana and North Carolina amid a steady downpour of news stories about the mathematical impossibility of Hillary Clinton outstripping Barack Obama in either the delegate count or the popular vote. But math isn’t the issue here. Mrs Clinton is set to stay in the race until the roll call at the Democratic convention in Denver on August 27 conclusively settles the issue. Not since Isaac Newton sought to decode the Ancient Testament or since Ronald Reagan redefined the properties of a meal fit for children to eat, has anyone defied science as absurdly as Mrs Clinton in her efforts to how that if you count things her way she’s in the lead. She is in the direct lineage of Joseph Stalin who said it’s not a matter of who does the voting, but who does the counting. How the Georgian dictator would have wagged his pipe in approval of Mrs Clinton’s claim that a disqualified election in which only her supporters voted somehow constitutes a legitimate expression of the popular Democratic will in Florida!

A popular line is that this interminable struggle between Obama and Clinton is good news for the Republican candidate, John McCain. While the Democrats bicker in the playpen, he can issue statesmanlike bulletins on matters of national importance. The flaw here is McCain’s inability to address matters of national importance in any serious way, beyond calling for endless war in Iraq and telling very poor people in Kentucky that he’s offering them big tax breaks on their stock investments.

Please read the entire article at:
http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn04262008.html