Thursday, May 8, 2008

The Clinton Machine: Victory at Any Cost

The recent rumblings don't sound good.

Clinton had a resurge coming out of Pennsylvania. She pushed hard and kept hope alive for North Carolina and Indiana. Then came her crushing defeat in North Carolina (14-point loss) and a 2-point narrow win in Indiana; making her nomination a mathematical impossibility, and even less likely if you factor in that she continues to lose on the popular vote. Clear signals for a withdrawal one would think. Never says Hilary as she pulls a Huckabee, ignores the obvious, and continues to push on.

Fine. Let's be charitable and acknowledge that perseverance is a great trait and that much has been accomplished by persons who ignored the naysayers and went on to achieve great success. That is not so much the issue, the increasingly scary part, is the tactics used by the Cs to achieve the coveted prize of the White House.

Senator Clinton has again come out swinging. She is no longer talking about war against Iran, this time it's about race and the fact that Obama can't win because he doesn't attract the white vote (!). According to Clinton, Obama's support within this group of "hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again", and she Clinton "has a much broader base to build a winning coalition on". Racially divisive? Not according to Clinton, who says that as everyone already knows "these are the people you have to win if you're a Democrat in sufficient numbers to actually win the election."Obama's camp felt that Clinton's comments were, "not true and frankly disappointing".

Not the smartest move for Clinton to pull the race card at this point. No surprise though given her (and Bill's) reputation of winning at any cost. However, it gets worse. Much worse. A recent news report strongly hints that the C-Machine has now embraced blackmailing.

According to CNN, Harvey Weinstein, a big Clinton backer, has threatened Nancy Pelosi. He allegedly told Pelosi that if she did not accept his proposal to fund revotes in Florida and Michigan, he would no longer contribute to any congressional Democrat. (Clinton believes that with revotes she would become the clear nominee.) In addition, Weinstein apparently has pressured Pelosi to rescind her earlier comments where she stated that superdelegates should support the candidate who was ahead in pledged delegates, i.e. Obama.

How can this not backfire on the Clintons? This is not perseverance. This is desperation and it is ugly.

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