Wishful Thinking? The Latest Hillary Scenario
By Howard Fineman
Newsweek
Some dreams never die, including one clung to by loyal Clintonistas: that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton will be the Democrats’ presidential nominee next year. Is there a chance she would get into the race? “That depends on what you mean by ‘get into the race’,” one of her closest friends and advisers explained to NEWSWEEK.
The scenario, as sketched by this hard-boiled insider, calls for Clinton to make an entrance as healer and unifier at the end of the primary season in May or June in the unlikely—but not impossible—event that none of the existing contenders has amassed a majority of the convention delegates. “You’d have to have Howard Dean not wrapping it up, and being an angry, wounded front runner,” this adviser said. “You’d have to have two of the other challengers tearing each other apart in primary after primary. Then Hillary could come in, well in advance of the convention, and say, ‘Look, somebody has to save the party’.”
The political logistics are doable. Under party rules, delegates are bound to vote at the convention for the candidate under whose banner they were elected in the primaries—but only on the first ballot. Party and elected officials—the so-called superdelegates—are free to shift allegiance, and could form an instant core of Clinton support. Should she make a dramatic entrance next summer, the senator might be able to draw on the help of some savvy campaign veterans (and Clinton loyalists) now in the employ of other candidates. If Sen. Joe Lieberman’s campaign fades, for example, she might recruit his top pros, media handler Mandy Grunwald and pollster Mark Penn.
In the meantime, Sen. Clinton isn’t ducking the campaign limelight. Just the opposite. She was the headliner hostess at last Saturday’s Jefferson-Jackson Day Dinner in Iowa, where the first-in-the-nation caucuses will be held next January. Clinton logged lots of time at the podium, introducing each of the contenders. “It was set up to make her the star,” groused one campaign manager. She would have been anyway, another Clinton insider said. “She still puts all the others in the shade and they all know it. She has the star power and they don’t. Here’s the way things stack up now,” he said. “The Republicans in the White House want Howard Dean to win the nomination. The Democrats in Washington want Dick Gephardt or John Kerry or even Wes Clark to win the nomination. And the media? The media is hoping and praying Hillary ends up with the nomination. Why? Because she’s a great story. Always has been and always will be.”
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