Hillary's Scorched Earth Plan

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By LISA VAN DUSEN
May 15, 2008

Of all the other things it told us about the Democratic nomination fight, Hillary Clinton's victory in West Virginia on Tuesday did nothing to diminish that seemingly superhuman sense of her own inevitability.

After beating Barack Obama, by a massive 40-point spread, Clinton told her supporters, "It's not over! I am more than ever determined to carry on this campaign until everyone has had a chance to make their voices heard."

In the same speech, she cooked the numbers needed to win to create the perception Obama is further from victory than he is, and demanded the Florida and Michigan votes be counted as cast, essentially laying the terms for a long, dirty fight she can't win any other way.

It's looking more and more as though Clinton is planning to push on not only until the last primaries in South Dakota and Montana on June 3, but to the convention floor in August.

This is the scorched earth strategy, also known as the nuclear option.

The only reason for her to do it, given the damage a floor fight would do to the Democratic party (Democrats have lost every election that followed a convention fight for the past 40 years), would be to win one way or the other; even if Obama wins the fight at the convention, he'll lose the election two months later, leaving her a clear shot in 2012 when John McCain will be 75 years old.

TACTICAL FLATTERY

Senator Clinton's tactical flattery of hard- working white voters ahead of West Virginia, a state that is 95 per cent white and overwhelmingly working class, not only echoed the race-baiting she and her husband have used ahead of every primary in every state with a sizeable working class white population, it paid off.

Exit polls showed racially motivated voting at higher rates than any recent primary, at 20 per cent.

Scorched earth is scorched earth.

One of the best windows on Senator Clinton's mindset on the question of her own resiliency came in an interview with Katie Couric on 60 Minutes in February, when she was asked whether she was prepared for the possibility of losing.

"You can't think like that. You have to believe you're going to win," Clinton said. "Otherwise leave the field and let somebody who has the confidence and the optimism and determination that a leader has to have get on that field instead."

So, it's never, ever, about the voters or the party or the good of the country, it's about her. Hillary vs. reality.

The thing is, she just might pull it off.

Meanwhile, it's like the final scene from an old Jimmy Cagney movie; Hillary Clinton holed up in a rickety tenement, holding a gun to the temple of the Democratic party while everyone from the priest to the fire chief to the dog catcher is staring up from the sidewalk below, waiting for her to come out with her hands up.

JUST TELL HER

In this version, they're tossing the megaphone around like a flaming potato because nobody wants to be the one to tell her it's over, just in case she comes out with both guns blazing.

Only with Hillary, she isn't yelling, "You'll never take me alive!"

She's yelling, "You'll never take me as long as he's alive!"