THOUGHTS ON WHAT’S NEXT
May 21st, 2008, 9:16 am · Post a Comment · posted by Dan Lehr
“Hillary Clinton does not lack for victories. She has had several recently. What she lacks is a way to make her victories meaningful. What she lacks is an argument.” - Roger Simon, the Politico
“The Democratic voting system is plainly out of kilter, but that is a fight for another day. Mrs. Clinton must work with the conditions as they exist, which means laying a moral claim to the nomination through numbers of votes rather than delegates. Her problem is that by most measures she has so far been unable to beat Mr. Obama on the plurality of votes. Unless, that is, you count votes cast in the renegade states of Michigan and Florida. According to the number crunchers at Real Clear Politics, only if the votes in those partial elections are tallied can Mrs. Clinton claim to be the winner. And even then Mr. Obama loses in a photo finish, 16,684,752 votes, or 47.6%, to Mrs. Clinton’s 16,711,719, or 47.7%.” -Nicholas Wapshott, the New York Sun
“How does he diplomatically handle Hillary Clinton’s exit from the race? What leverage does he have? If he doesn’t pressure her to get out, he risks looking weak, unable to win the nomination decisively. On the other hand, if he doesn’t let Clinton leave the race with dignity and grace, he risks alienating some of the women voters who have supported her so stoutly throughout the primaries and whom he needs in the fall.” - Slate’s John Dickerson
“Does Sen Clinton have any hope? Not really. She has two aims. She must narrow the gap in delegates to such a small number that it somehow looks like a near-tie. To achieve this her main hope is to somehow persuade Democratic officials that they should agree to give her a large number of delegates out of the currently disallowed states of Michigan and Florida. Then her second aim is to amass enough of a popular vote win in the remaining three primary contests – most notably Puerto Rico, the largest of them - so that she can claim at least on some measures, a narrow popular vote win over Sen Obama.” - Gerard Baker, the London Times
““Clinton Supporters Count Too,” a women’s group, is threatening to boycott the election and abandon the Democratic Party. A spokesperson says, “If Hillary Clinton is not the nominee, we will not support the nominee.”“ - Kirsten Powers, New York Post
“Both sides have noted that the divide seems to run along generational lines. Gloria Steinem lamented earlier this year, “What worries me is that some women, perhaps especially younger ones, hope to deny or escape the sexual caste system; thus Iowa women over 50 and 60, who disproportionately supported Senator Clinton, proved once again that women are the one group that grows more radical with age.” Well, maybe. But more likely, the generation that lived the most dramatic aspect of the feminist revolution is the most likely to see Clinton in symbolic terms. It works both ways. Sixteen years ago, this newspaper quoted a 36-year-old homemaker (today she would be 52) bitter about Clinton’s famous disdain for staying home to bake cookies and have teas. But the generation that came after has mostly taken women in the workforce for granted. The 32-year-old liberal writer Michelle Goldberg expressed her mystification that older feminists “seem to identify with Clinton so profoundly that they interpret rejection of her as a personal rebuke.” ” - Jonathan Chait, LA Times
What do you think?
