The Clinton Team's Long View

[BeatleBoot]

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/02/16/the_clinton_teams_long_view.html?hpid=sec-politics

The Clinton Team's Long View

Updated: 7:22 p.m.

By Jose Antonio Vargas

ON THE CLINTON CAMPAIGN BUS -- Harold Ickes, one of Sen. Hillary Clinton's senior advisors, announced the campaign's "long view" in a conference call this morning.

Bottom line: Say hello Puerto Rico.

"We are going to fight all the way to the convention," Ickes said.

Ickes, a veteran of the Clinton White House and a central figure in Clinton's 2000 Senate race, told reporters that the campaign expects Clinton "will able to hold her own in Wisconsin" and win Texas, Ohio and Rhode Island. "We think the demographics of Pennsylvania very much suits her candidacy," he said. "By the end of this process by the 7th of June, when Puerto Rico votes, she will be neck and neck with Mr. Obama . . . Then she will wrap up the nomination.

Ickes was quick to note that "superdelegates," the more than 790 Democratic elected officials and party leaders who may well determine the eventual nominee, should be referred to as "automatic delegates," complaining that the word "super" has "some sort of sense that they're going to descend to us from Mars." ("The fourth estate," he added, "invented the name 'superdelegates.'")

Noting recent comments by Howard Dean, chair of the Democratic National Committee, David Axelrod, Sen. Barack Obama's chief strategist and Rep. Jim Clyburn, the House Majority Whip-- and side-stepping comments made by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi -- Ickes asserted that automatic delegates should exercise "their best judgment in the interests of the party and the country" in choosing their nominee. Declaring that the race is "long from over," he said that there still 18 jurisdictions left to vote with 1,075 delegates at stake -- more than 50 percent needed to win the nomination without Florida and Michigan.

[AndyTiedye]

1. Every Other Candidate Who Said "I'm In This Until the Convention" Has Bailed Within a Week or Two

If they really are in it until the convention, they do not have to say so.

[Alexander]

6. It has replaced "spending time with the family" among politicians.

[City Lights]

2. All the states Obama won=irrelevant. Puerto Rico=relevant.

:thumbsdown:

Why am I not surprised?

[mrmx9]

4. Isn't Puerto Rico winner take all i.e. unfair!

Why is this one primary winner take all where every proper state is proportional?

[City Lights]

10. I've heard some say it's winner-take-all, and other say it's proportional.

:shrug:

[tekisui]

3. Long View.....Starting.....now.

Short View didn't work.

[kipmurr]

5. good, I hope she keeps fighting

[goldcanyonaz]

7. She better not go anywhere! GOMAMA!

:woohoo:

[ddeclue]

8. Ah the "kiss of death"..."I'm in it until the convention"...

when have we heard that tired line before and who really believes it?

and the notion that it's "OK" that we're losing now because we will win later in some other state never works out - ask Rudy Giuliani how well that worked in FL...

[Tatiana]

9. Obama will take Puerto Rico.

And then what?

Superdelegates? Will likely move toward Obama; they see the downticket advantage.

Seating the FL and MI delegates? Hey, Obama will probably spot them their delegation. It will still not be enough to overcome the pledged delegate lead.

And what if all that fails? What will the Clintons do then?

That's what scares me.