To: Raymond Duray who wrote (6599 ) 11/16/2003 4:25:49 PM From: Glenn Petersen Read Replies (2) | Respond to 2004: Wishful Thinking? msnbc.com 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’.”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.”
