Buzzards

In the last couple of hours, I've been contacted twice out of the blue with friends asking incredulously if I've heard about Hillary Clinton loaning her campaign $6.4 million. The answer is yes, and I don't give a damn.

The buzzards are circling over the Clinton campaign right now. My first reaction to the news was a nice little mixture of apathy and disgust. Watching the coverage of the results in North Carolina and Indiana was like watching a funeral. The fact that she sort of won Indiana (i.e. by the slimmest of margins) was irrelevant: she needed an ass-kicking and she failed. Everyone knew it, and everyone was saying it, and the question changed from "if" she'll drop out to "when." Even Obama's staff has come just short of saying that they're going to stop fighting primaries and start waging a general election campaign. Of course, those of us in the Obama camp have known that the race is over since she failed to win decisively on March 4, but at this point, with the entire yammering class crowning Obama the nominee, it would be as pointless as it would be embarrassing for her to continue. It would relegate her to Mike Huckabee status. I've gotten to the edge of outright loathing for Senator Clinton, and I still think a futile run would be far below her dignity and her stature. Whatever I may think of her campaign for the presidency, it doesn't diminish my belief that Hillary Clinton is someone I want in the Senate verbally bludgeoning all who dare stand in her way. She is a fighter, and I respect that. I'd just rather have her in the Senate than the White House.

However, after doing some reading, I'm actually becoming convinced that if done properly, prolonging Clinton's campaign will actually be good for the party. Marc Ambinder has a very compelling list of seven reasons why Clinton should stay in the race (and before you start yelling at me, an equally compelling list of seven reasons for her to quit), the most convincing of which is basically to give her voters their opportunity for a death rattle. Hard though it may be for someone like myself to believe it, Clinton does have her die-hard loyalists, and her defeat will be more palatable and believable to them if it comes the day after the primaries end than it will be if she backs out because Tim Russert called the time of death. If she didn't give up two months ago, there's no real reason to expect her to do so now. Imagine a baseball game where the home team is down by a run in the ninth inning with two men on and their clean-up man up to bat, and they're forced to call the game because of a rain-out. Those who still believe Clinton has a chance would be more bitter if they didn't feel like the game has run its course. This report indicates that the Clinton campaign has this in mind and intends to pull the plug in early June. If Hillary acknowledges that her viciousness on the campaign trail has ceased to do her any good, and both candidates start pushing party unity and ripping into John McCain as if each had already been declared the nominee, it will be easier to put both factions back onto the same team.

Taegan Goddard looks at the continuation of Clinton's campaign from a strictly cost-benefit angle: if she's going to spend what it takes to continue, she's got to expect some sort of benefit. The first and most immediately practical goal goes back to the original question here: the $6.4 million that Clinton loaned her campaign. Anyone who's on the mailing list of any candidate who has dropped out has gotten post-mortem fundraising emails asking them to help retire their debt. It was announced late last night that the Senator wouldn't be doing any appearances today, but would be holding a fundraiser late in the day: guess why. Her campaign is not only broke, they're in serious debt, and they need to be able to close their books when the campaign ends.

More to the point, this is how the Democratic party will achieve the coalition necessary to build an appealing platform and policy agenda. The real benefit Clinton expects is that Obama will be willing to bargain. In order to achieve the party unity he so desperately wants and needs, Clinton is going to have to be able to convince her people that she's on the inside, and that means A) a voice in choosing the VP and B) at least one major policy concession.

First things first. Personally, I think all this talk of a unity ticket is load of crap: Hillary Rodham Clinton will play second fiddle to no one, and I think it's more likely she'll want to put one of her people on the ticket and ask that Obama back her for Senate Majority Leader. Harry Reid is the congressional equivalent of the kid who got picked last at kickball, so as far as I'm concerned, it would be a welcome change. I've heard some people kick around Ed Rendell's name, but I don't buy that for a second, and while Wes Clark would have the advantage of his defense credentials, I'm not sure he has the chops to run the Senate. Evan Bayh has made a complete ass of himself defending her time and again in the last month, and he didn't really come through for her yesterday, so he's out. My money says Ohio Governor Ted Strickland is a far more likely choice.

As for policy, well, I think that's a "duh" statement. She wants her health care plan. All the analysis of the Obama and Clinton plans that I've read have come to the conclusion that Clinton's is actually the superior, regardless of Obama being the better candidate overall. Elizabeth Edwards has come out and said the same, leading me to believe that an acceptance of that health care plan would bring John into the fold as well. Clinton is free, of course, to introduce her own plan in the Senate, but it's oh so much more likely to succeed if she has a suave and popular President Obama throwing his full weight behind it.

All of this still leaves me at the question not of "if" Clinton will drop out, but "when and how." Obama and his people have a month until the end of voting to do the necessary negotiations so that he can move forward starting June 4, and Clinton has a month to start reconfiguring her rhetoric to put her in a place that will best serve her own ambitions. Which, of course, is her chief skill.