Covering yesterday’s farewell-and-thank you party thrown by Hillary Clinton for campaign workers, N.Y. Daily News reporters Kenneth R. Bazinet and Michael McAuliff have described “tears and hugs and lingering bitterness that will take some time to heal among Clinton’s soon-to-be-unemployed foot soldiers.” They’ve also run an astonishing kicker quote — an anonymous “campaign aide” saying, “I will never forgive Obama for what he did to Hillary…I will vote for him, but that’s it.”
What do you say to such a statement? Do you say, “Yeah, I hear you…Obama played it low and dirty while Hillary held high the torch of dignity and appealed to the best in voters”? What kind of prescribed medication do you have to be on to buy into this?
Trust me — in her noon speech today in Washington, D.C., Clinton’s carefully parsed words will provide comfort to the person who voiced the above. Clinton’s heart-of-hearts is not in this charade — we all know that. Many of her rabid supporters regard today’s concession speech as a kind of funeral. She’s something of a political realist, of course, and knows what she has to do, but many of us will be flabbergasted if she convinces everyone that she really and truly means what she’s about to “say.”
We all know who and what she is — do we not?
N.Y. Times reporter Jodi Kantor has offered a more carefully measured view of the situation.