Clinton isn’t hoping for anything quite that “good,” but good enough to give her a chance. After all, the race is really quite close. It has been all along. It’s just that his rather slim margin is surprisingly sturdy and difficult to overcome. But if something happened that damaged Obama irreparably, well…Clinton could build on the rather considerable pile of delegates and voters and connections and money that she has and slip past him.
Let’s go back to our boxer. How does his strategy change when he figures he can’t win on points? Very simple. He stops trying to land good punches, per se. Don’t get me wrong–he still wants to land them. But his purpose is different. It no longer does any good to land a nice, clean punch that impresses the judges. What he wants to do now is to hurt his opponent. Anything that dazes him, or renders him unable to see straight, or makes him feel like lying down, is good. Anything less is useless.
Clinton’s hopeless delegate and popular vote situation has been apparent since her “big wins” in Ohio and Texas, which, in fact, weren’t nearly big enough. That’s why, ever since then, she’s been trying to come up with anything she can to sully her opponent (so far with inadequate results).
It’s not just the usual mudslinging that candidates always use to try to get a leg up, or even the usual, more desperate mudslinging they tend to use when they’re losing. Damaging Obama, at this point, is not primarily, for Clinton, a means to the end of getting more votes. It IS the end. If she can get more popular votes and pledged delegates as a result, all the better–but mostly, she wants to damage him so she’ll get the superdelegate vote at the end. She wants the rank and file voters to support her too–she’ll need that–but they can always support her AFTER they have voted.
The regular democratic process isn’t where Hillary’s head is. Bear that in mind, as Pennsylvania votes.
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