This 2.16 N.Y. Times story by Don Van Natta Jr. and Jo Becker goes into pretzel-like contortions in order to not say what’s really going on, but it comes into focus if you settle into the quotes and the careful parsings and hints and whatnot. Bottom line: unless she pulls off a total nuclear blowout in Texas, Ohio and Pennsylvania, Clinton is toast.
Van Natta and Becker’s report about a decision by Al Gore and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and others to “remain neutral for now in the presidential race in part to keep open the option to broker a peaceful resolution to what they fear could be a bitterly divided convention” is, don’t kid yourself, a slapdown to the Clinton team’s proclaimed intention to purse a backroom winning strategy via superdelegates.
It is particularly a rebuke to that statement by Clinton’s communications director Howard Wolfson that the Clinton campaign will “not concede the race to Barack Obama if he wins a greater number of pledged delegates by the end of the primary season, and if necessary [to rely] on the 796 elected officials and party bigwigs to put her over the top,” as reported two days ago.
This story doesn’t read like much at first, but read it over a second time and let it settle in. Trust me, it’s the next thing to a death-gong.
Hillary could blow Barack out of the water in Texas, Ohio and Pennsvlvania. She could but she almost certainly won’t. Barack will probably match her in Texas delegates, and he could even get more votes. The notion of the space aliens in Ohio and Pennsylvania voting in a radically different way than the way the voters in Virginia and Maryland have just doesn’t figure. It would be just too weird.
And by the way, John Edwards is still acting like a squishy, calculating old-school candy-ass. The man is pathetic.