Two recent developments highlight the danger the Democrats are in as they teeter on the brink of a civil war. First, a group of prominent contributors to the Clinton campaign sent a sharply worded letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, chiding her for publicly stating that the leader in delegates and the popular vote should be the party's nominee. Such public criticism portends a coming conflict between the two most powerful women in the Democratic Party – a conflict that will likely be harmful to the party's self-interest.
Second, a series of recent national polls found that nearly one in three Clinton supporters say they will vote for Mr. McCain if Mrs. Clinton is not the nominee. One in five Obama supporters say they will not support Mrs. Clinton if he is not the party's standard-bearer. Democratic Party spinmeisters will attempt to brush off these results as simply passing squalls that will blow over as the general election campaign gets underway. The fact remains that the Obama-Clinton battle is taking the party into new and dangerous waters, and no one can control the situation.
Enter Harry Reid. He well knows that Mrs. Clinton would never accept the vice presidency under Mr. Obama. Mr. Reid also understands Mrs. Clinton's naked ambition and drive to win. He knows her calculating nature, and senses her need for an out. His years of experience tell him that if Mr. Obama loses to Mr. McCain, Mr. Obama will be finished, much in the same way that Al Gore and John Kerry have been swept into history's remainder bin of failed Democrat presidential hopefuls.
But has Mr. Reid thought out the power equation? If Mrs. Clinton were Senate majority leader during a McCain presidency, then she and she alone would be the leader of the party and first in line for the nomination in 2012.
It is very likely that this is what Mr. Reid, and perhaps a number of other party elders, is thinking. After all, the simplest way to prevent a train wreck is to switch the runaway train onto another track.
So will Mr. Reid, like Henry Fonda in the 1964 film "The Best Man," nobly put aside his own ambition for a greater good? If he considers all the facts, he might. Mr. Reid has to know that, in this most peculiar of election years, only one individual has the power to end the Clinton-Obama war, and that is he. If he voluntarily passes his position to Mrs. Clinton in exchange for her withdrawal, history will likely remember him as his party's best man.
Mr. Bond, a former chairman of the Republican National Committee, is a government relations consultant in Washington. |
