Was today designed solely to make Hillary President?
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Should Clinton have been confirmed as nominee this week?
If you have any doubt about the planning and sheer determination that has gone into Hillary’s campaign for the White House then you should look at an article at Real Clear Politics by Robert Novak.
For the whole point of concertinaing the primary timetable to create “Super Tuesday” was to blast out the competition so that Clinton could effectively secure the nomination this week. Then all the effort could be focused on winning back the White House for the Democrats.
Novak writes: “Terrence McAuliffe, the multimillionaire wheeler-dealer imposed by the Clintons on the Democratic National Committee as its chairman after the 2000 election, quickly paid back his benefactors. He designed a front-loaded primary system intended to confirm Sen. Hillary Clinton as presidential nominee by Feb. 5… McAuliffe, now the Clinton campaign’s national chairman, calculated that front-loading would make his candidate the de facto nominee by now so that full time could be devoted to attacking the Republicans and raising funds against them.”
For when this was being worked out nobody could have foreseen that an alternative contender could emerge with the special appeal and fundraising capabilities of Camp Clinton. At the time it was a no-brainer.
Even up to a fortnight ago the Clinton Campaign was expecting that today they would have wrapped up the nomination. At the time Hillary was holding doubt digit poll leads in California where the latest data suggest it’s neck and neck.
Now Hillary is facing a challenge from someone who raised $30m alone in January compared with her’s team’s $13m. The power of all that money has enabled the Obama camp to do what the Clinton’s thought was impossible – for an alternative to Hillary to have the resource to campaign in 22 states simultaneously.
We’ll have to see if the polls are right, of course, but it might be that the Super Tuesday plan hurts Hillary rather than helps her. Whatever there is still a long way to go to the nomination for both of them.