The Note: Drama Club
Clinton makes slow exit -- and now comes the fun part.
June 5, 2008 -- The wait ends. The drama, on the other hand, has barely begun.
It hasn't been pretty. It's lingering a little too long. But Democrats who feared a messy, divisive end to a too-long campaign that's been both of those things can breathe a little easier: It all ends on Saturday.
The Democratic Party has moved on -- and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton recognized that the lights had been turned out on her bid for the nomination.
The sentence that for so long seemed unfathomable: "Ending her historic, hard fought bid to become the Democratic party's first woman presidential nominee, Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., will announce Saturday, surrounded by supporters, that she is conceding to Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill.," per ABC News.
From her e-mail to supporters, sent out overnight: "I have said throughout the campaign that I would strongly support Senator Obama if he were the Democratic Party's nominee, and I intend to deliver on that promise."
Saturday could be quite a show, at a to-be-determined site in Washington: "Thousands invited to this -- everyone from people who gave $5 to multimillionaires," ABC's Kate Snow reported on "Good Morning America" Thursday.
"One adviser said Mrs. Clinton would concede defeat, congratulate Mr. Obama and proclaim him the party's nominee, while pledging to do what was needed to assure his victory in November," per The New York Times' Adam Nagourney and Jeff Zeleny.
Ah yes -- what's needed. That offers just a hint of the latest campaign, promising all the intrigue and dramatic twists of the former one, just with slightly lower stakes (No. 2, not No. 1).
The Clintons aren't going anywhere. They didn't after Tuesday, won't after Saturday, and won't even after Obama chooses a running mate -- whenever and whomever that may be. (Isn't it the presumptive nominee who usually gets the benefit of a little presumptuousness?)
Not this time:
"The decision [by Clinton] came hours after the launch of an aggressive campaign by some of Clinton's supporters to encourage Obama to pick her as his running mate had further stoked tensions with backers of the senator from Illinois," The Washington Post's Jonathan Weisman and Dan Balz report. "Robert L. Johnson, the founder of Black Entertainment Television and a prominent Clinton confidant, said in an interview that she was 'absolutely ready' to talk to Obama about the No. 2 slot and would take it if offered."
Johnson tells Balz that Clinton has authorized her supporters to press her case: "That affirmative desire is with Hillary. That's clear. The question is, is there affirmative desire on the part of Senator Obama," he said.
(If she really does want it, does public pressure truly help?)
She may get that. Per ABC News: "On a conference call with Democratic supporters Wednesday, Clinton indicated she would accept the vice presidential nomination if it was offered, but that she doesn't want people to lobby Obama on her behalf for it." Said a Democratic member of Congress who spoke to Clinton Wednesday: "She said, 'Look, I'm not fighting for that. If it helps them, fine. If it doesn't, that's fine, too.' "
Clinton's getting out took a nudge from some bold-faced names who know their politics: Rahm Emanuel, Charlie Rangel, Ed Rendell, and a whole bunch of Democratic senators.
Rangel told ABC's Kate Snow: "Unless she has some good reasons -- which I can't think of -- I really think we ought to get on with endorsements [of Obama] and dealing with what we have to deal with . . . so we can move forward."
And Obama's imprint is already being felt on the party: Per ABC's George Stephanopoulos, the Democratic National Committee will no longer accept contributions from federal lobbyists and PACs, in keeping with Obama's well-publicized policy.
Yet the Clintons remain outsized presences in the race -- and will be even after this odd three-day period where everyone knows what's going to happen but the event itself has yet to take place.
"Her initial reluctance to back Obama and the continuing mystery over how exactly she will end her historic campaign had party faithful asking today: What is she waiting for, and what does she want?" Scott Helman writes in The Boston Globe. "The New York senator has yet to publicly acknowledge that Obama beat her for the nomination, leaving some of his supporters -- and even some of hers -- perplexed and disappointed."
(More than a few Democrats point out that both President Bush and Condoleezza Rice beat Clinton to congratulating Obama on winning the nomination.)
She has important options yet: "She could, for example, release her more than 1,900 delegates to Obama and be through as a presidential candidate. Or she could suspend her candidacy and keep control of her delegates, maintaining her political leverage until the Democratic National Convention in August," Peter Nicholas and Mark Z.Barabak report in the Los Angeles Times.
"She will continue to pursue the possibility of being Obama's vice presidential running mate, people close to her said, and is expected to keep 1,922 delegates after garnering the support of a record-breaking 18 million voters," Newsday's Glenn Thrush reports.
Not everyone's dreaming, and Obama wouldn't need this three-person vice-presidential committee -- Caroline Kennedy, Eric Holder, and Jim Johnson -- if the pick was made for him. It's time to start dropping names -- and Obama is under no particular rush, except that being applied by Clinton allies who want her name on a bumper sticker already.
"I think it's very important for me to meet with her and talk to her about how we move this party forward," Obama told ABC's Charlie Gibson Wednesday. "My main goal is to make sure that the party is unified."
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