Reply #66: My opinion, take it or leave it

[Tom Rinaldo]

Though I know others have this opinion also. Clark, being a General who has had to plan actual military campaigns with live ammo killing real people, takes strategic analysis very very seriously. And he is damn good at it, meaning he looks hard at the full range of facts in an unemotional essentially objective way, no wishful thinking. For awhile Clark was head of Strategic Planning for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he is good at forseeing consequences of different courses of action. Clark decided, when all was said and done, that he could not defeat John Kerry for the nomination, and that no one else could either. Once he achieved that clarity, given his own objectives, the choice was clear for him. Withdraw and endorse Kerry, the inevitable winner.

Events turned out the way Clark foresaw. Of course we can never be certain that they might not have turned out differently had Clark stayed in the race, but I for one am convinced Clark was right. It was painful for his supporters at the time, because we all still had gas in our tanks, the campaign was still raising money, and Clark had some good organization in place for some of the upcoming states. Rightly or wrongly, we thought we had better prospects in some of them than Edwards had. It isn't worth arguing about whether we were right about that or not. Even if that were true, Kerry would still have come out on top. We were seeing the race emotionally, Clark wasn't.

AP one of the reasons why I try to stick to saying positive things about my guy without saying negative things about anyone else's is that I don't know who Kerry will pick, but I am confident he will have his own good reasons for choosing whoever he does. I am also confident I will enthusiastically fall into place supporting our ticket after Kerry makes his choice. That will certainly be the case if Kerry picks John Edwards.