Hillary's Agenda

Stick a fork in her, she's done -- right?

I mean, it's over. Obama is the nominee -- right?

So why is Hillary still in the race?

After all, people tend to do things for a reason, and Hillary is nothing if not motivated, so if she's still in the race, and refuses to concede reality not to mention the election results, it must be that she has some agenda that we haven't figured out yet.

What could that agenda be?

Bob Herbert wrote a scathing column in the New York Times about Hillary's latest attempt to belittle Barack Obama:

The Clintons have never understood how to exit the stage gracefully.

Their repertoire has always been deficient in grace and class. So there was Hillary Clinton cold-bloodedly asserting to USA Today that she was the candidate favored by “hard-working Americans, white Americans,” and that her opponent, Barack Obama, the black candidate, just can’t cut it with that crowd.

“There’s a pattern emerging here,” said Mrs. Clinton.

There is, indeed. There was a name for it when the Republicans were using that kind of lousy rhetoric to good effect: it was called the Southern strategy, although it was hardly limited to the South. Now the Clintons, in their desperation to find some way — any way — back to the White House, have leapt aboard that sorry train.

He can’t win! Don’t you understand? He’s black! He’s black!

Ouch!

I hate to admit it, but Herbert's right on the money here. Hillary is desperate and resorting to the worst sort of Lee Atwater tactics in order to pull victory out of the jaws of an all-but-certain defeat.

She's lost. She has to know that. Hillary Clinton is many things -- stupid isn't one of them.

So what's going on here? What is her agenda?

There are a couple of possiblities.

One is that she's just putting one foot in front of the other because she doesn't know how to do anything else -- sheer dogged determination has gotten the Clintons so much of what they've wanted in the past, and they've perservered and won when anyone else would have given up (after the Gennifer Flowers revelations just before the New Hampshire primary in '92; after the Lewinsky scandal first broke; during the impeachment hearings) that they're going through the motions simply because it's worked before.

Another possibility is that she's staying in hoping that something -- anything -- will happen to change the outcome, rather like the poker player who's deep in the hole and keeps betting anyway in the hopes that the next hand will turn things around. She strikes me as being too rational for this scenario, but I guess we can't rule it out. Anyone who lived through the year 1968 (and that would include me) can't rule it out either.

Then there's the ugly scenario. The really ugly scenario, which some pundits have begun to whisper. I'd like to think that Hillary isn't capable of this kind of Machiavellian thinking. But I have to admit that it's possible this could be the real deal.

It could be that Hillary knows that if Barack Obama wins in 2008 and is reelected in 2012, that would mean it would be 2016 before the White House became open again. And it would be unlikely that Hillary can pull off the nomination by then. So what does she do? It's now or never.

There's only one other option: to so damage and weaken Obama by her attacks during the primary campaign that he loses to an elderly John McCain, who then leaves office after one term making it possible for Hillary to run and win in 2012.

Would she do that? Would she so betray the standard bearer of her own party (not to mention the party itself) in order to obtain power?

What do you think?

Tom Moran