For weeks, if not months, the major press has had this lede set in print, like a sure and vulturous obituary: "Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton will endorse Senator Barack Obama on [insert day of the week here], bringing a close to her 17-month campaign for the White House."
Seventeen months – the last five of which were little more than a political death watch, full of recriminations and outward blame emanating from the Clinton camp.
Who was responsible for Hillary's fall? It seems everyone was -- everyone, that is, except Hillary, which was quite a trick, since it was Hillary in charge of her fate.
At least down to the final hours, she was. For the formal end came at the hands of her closest friends: congressional allies who had been waiting for sanity to reign, but eventually realized that that time, left unassisted, might never come.
Clinton-supporter Charlie Rangel of the House perhaps reflected their game-ending frustration the best: "We pledged to support her to the end. Our problem is not being able to determine when the hell the end is."
Truth be told, Charlie, which I imagine you already knew, is that the end was in January. Any presidential campaign that marches into the Iowa caucus projecting Hillary’s titanic sense of inevitability, only to then come in third, is a presidential campaign of the past.
There is, simply, no political recovery from a plunge from that height of expectations.
And so it has been for five grueling, unnecessary months. Throughout which, I feel compelled to add, we have been assured by the Clinton camp – lectured, actually – that her struggling campaign was about everything but Hillary.
Those who charged otherwise – that it was only about Hillary, that is – were but cynical detractors. How could they say such things? Why could they not concede the depths of humanity inherent in Hillary’s selfless campaign?
But now that it’s all over we learn, as though we needed to learn this, that Hillary’s final weeks and months weren’t quite so selfless. The reasons for her seemingly strange tenacity are leaking out, the best of which I’ll leave for last.
First, reports The Politico, "she could use Obama’s help raising money to retire her debts, something she signaled with an aggressive online appeal for cash" in her most ungracious, non-concession speech Tuesday night.
Second, "her supporters assume she has earned the prime speaking slot at the Democratic National Convention that Obama can bestow." Now there’s a selfless goal for you. But it’s also one that preshadows the third and most cynicism-inducing reason for Hillary having stayed in the race:
"She especially needs help restoring support from an African-American community that had been her base – assistance that can only come from Obama’s fulsome embrace."
Now why, you might ask yourself, would Hillary, at the close of a primary season in which she is the loser, need "help restoring support" from the African-American community? Why would she have leveraged stubbornness in return for that help? She is, after all, not the party’s nominee.
Except she is, in her mind. Not this year, of course, but in 2012. She is already running, already reformulating a coalition, already counting on an Obama loss in the general election.
Brace yourself. For Hillary has in store, I would wager, a lot of little verbal "slips" on the way – slips guaranteed to keep the Obama campaign in turmoil over the coming months.
For Hillary, the ultimate point of her heretofore pointless campaign is just beginning. And that, Mr. Rangel, is where the hell the end now lies -- because the Clintons never quit.
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