Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Clinton "more determined than ever"

So Hillary won pretty big in West Virginia, as expected, and if you believe what she says, she's "more determined than ever" to stay in and fight this thing out. From CNN:

"I am more determined than ever to carry on this campaign," she told supporters
in Charleston, West Virginia.

"I am in this race because I believe I am the
strongest candidate. ... I can lead this party to victory in the general
election if you lead me to victory now."

With half of the results in, Clinton was ahead of Sen. Barack Obama by a margin of more than 2-1.

Clinton has faced calls to drop out of the race because she trails Obama in delegates won, states won and the popular vote this primary season.



Of course, she doesn't just "trail" in all those things; she has literally no hope of winning the nomination unless a picture turns up of Obama in a cave in Afghanistan holding a Kalashnikov.

It's worth taking a step back here and recognizing that this is the standard M.O. for losing presidential candidates. No matter how dim their prospects are, they always sound 100% confident right up until the end. See Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, John Edwards, etc.

So I take Clinton's words with a grain of salt. She could drop out tomorrow and it wouldn't surprise me. More likely she will wait until the next round of primaries are finished. It even does Obama a favor in one way, since he is likely to lose by a similarly huge margin in Kentucky next week, and it would be more of an embarrassment if he lost to a candidate that had already dropped out.


1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Good call - your analysis of Clinton's situation is dead on. Too bad she's the only one who can't see it.