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Hillary Clinton vs. The Definition of Momentum
By Bill | March 3, 2008 | Email This Post
Senator Clinton treated us to at least two nonsensical opinions over the last several days. In the first, she claims that, despite eleven straight losses to Barack Obama, momentum is on her side. It reminds me of a quote from Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy: is this a new definition of [momentum] with which I’m unfamiliar? Imagine any other field of endeavor in which one side might gain the upper hand in eleven contests in a row; as a point of comparison, take the 27 year stretch from 1980-2007, an era in college football during which it is generally regarded that the University of Miami “had Florida State’s number,” so to speak. Their longest winning steak during the period? Five games. So much for momentum.
In the second departure from reason, Ms. Clinton claims that if her rival loses a single one of tomorrow’s primaries, it will indicate that the electorate is having second thoughts about President Obama. It’s obviously too much to ask that we treat such an outcome as a simple loss, a mere one of fifty or so contests. Rather, we must consider it a repudiation of Obamania. Applying that logic to her own campaign, voters have had “second thoughts” about Clinton twenty-seven times, which is the count of state elections she has lost to date. It’s a particularly disingenuous tact for her to take when she already knows that Obama is likely to lose Rhode Island; she’s effectively trying to fool the American public into basing their final exam grades on test results to which she already has the answer key.
What we’re seeing is nothing less that Hillary Clinton’s campaign coming apart in front of our eyes. Her response should be no surprise. Remember Rudy Giuliani predicting a victory in Florida the night of January 28? Of course, he knew he would fall the next day, but national candidates are forbidden - by precedent, by style, by the impetus of their backers, perhaps by their very nature - to admit that they’re losing. Perhaps rightfully so; it’s something of a contagion… once losing starts, it has to run its course. If you’re marked as having failed before the votes actually start coming in, as was John McCain, you have the chance to work your way out of the hole. But with eleven states left, you simply don’t have time to recover.
All Hillary can do now is say the right things - I’ve got the momentum! You’ll see, the American people are having second thoughts about Obama! See? He only beat me in three out of four states! - and hope that she does no worse than split Ohio and Texas. If she does that, she can still win the nomination - even if she has to resort to party machinations at the convention. If she comes up second in both… it’s over. Sure, we’ll be treated to a brief dustup over the admissibility of the Michigan and Florida delegates, but she’ll have lost, and not gracefully.
But then, have either of the Clintons ever done anything gracefully?
Topics: Barack Obama, Democrats, Hillary Clinton |