You may not like Hillary Clinton much, but you have to grant she's not stupid. So why is she hanging on so tenaciously? McClatchy's report on a "desperate Clinton arguing on" may reveal the answer.
Clinton campaign strategist Geoff Garin and communications director Howard Wolfson, speaking to a breakfast meeting with reporters, repeated recent Clinton campaign assertions that the delegate majority is 2,209 to shoot down speculation that Clinton would drop out of the race after her expected defeat of Obama in West Virginia on Tuesday. Previously, Democrats had said 2,025 delegates would be needed to win, a number Obama is likely to reach on May 20, after the Oregon and Kentucky primaries. ...
... Clinton also is lagging in the pledged delegate count and is short on campaign cash. Still, her advisers laid out a strategy in which her path to the nomination depends on wooing working-class, rural whites and seniors and pushing for the seating of delegates from Michigan and Florida.
Gee, if you were Garin or Wolfson and your credibility as indispensable campaign strategists was on the line, you'd want to play this out to whatever looks like a win for you, if not for your candidate, wouldn't you? Just move the goal posts again. Twist the DNC's arm. Declare West Virginia a swing state. Play that frayed race card one more time.
Isn't is possible that Wolfson and Garin -- guys who've taken one of the most "inevitable" presidential candidates and helped to turn her into an embarrassed and discredited loser -- want to play this out until they can make themselves look good enough to be hired again?
T'hell with the Clintons (they've goofed over and over again). Geoff and Howie want a future.
