LYNCHBURG, Va. — Campaigning for his wife yesterday, former
President Bill Clinton threatened to remain in the state of
Virginia indefinitely if its voters did not choose Hillary Clinton
in Tuesday’s Democratic presidential primary.
“OK, now here’s the deal. If ya’ll don’t vote for Hillary, I
ain’t leavin’,” the former president said as he loudly downed a
pulled pork barbeque sandwich, hush puppies, slaw and a jumbo iced
tea in under 45 seconds.
“I’m not kidding,” he said. “I love this place; I can stay here
a long, long time. LOTS to do here. Golf. Fish. Sit beside your
wives at church. Buddy, I would LOVE it. I live in New York now,
man, you know how long it’s been since I hung my underwear out on
the clothesline to dry? Oh, yeah, I hang ‘em high, too, so the
whole neighborhood can get a good look.”
Clinton made his comments the day after Sen. Barack Obama swept
Sen. Hillary Clinton in primaries in Louisiana, Nebraska,
Washington, and the Virgin Islands. Sen. Clinton replaced her
campaign manager after the losses, which came shortly after she
loaned her campaign $5 million when it became clear that she had
been unable to raise as much money as Sen. Obama in the fourth
quarter of 2007.
“It’s clearly a desperate strategy,” University of Virginia
political scientist Larry Sabbatical said of Bill Clinton’s threat.
“But they’ve tried just about everything to beat Obama, and
nothing’s worked. At this point, what else have they got? The
prospect of a white trash ex-president sitting in his boxers on a
lawn chair in his front yard sipping cheap beer and hooting at your
daughters before scores of national and international media
representatives, that’s a pretty powerful incentive, I think.”
At another campaign stop later in the day, Bill Clinton showed
up in a sleeveless undershirt, gym shorts and flip flops, carrying
a box of Krispy Kreme doughnuts, and said he was shopping for a
house.
“I’m fixin’ to get me one uh them biguns up in a fancy
neighborhood,” Clinton said just before belching loudly. “It’s
gotta have a giant front yard, though. I need somewhere to put all
the spare parts to my 1969 Camaro.”
Exit polls conducted over the weekend show a surge of support
for Hillary Clinton starting on Sunday, the day after Obama’s
sweep.
“Given Saturday’s election results, you’d expect to see a bump
for Obama,” William and Mary political scientist Bill Mary said.
“Clearly something local has happened to shift the momentum toward
Sen. Clinton. I can’t say for sure it had anything to do with her
husband spray painting ‘I love chicks’ on the statue of Stonewall
Jackson in Manassas, but I suspect that didn’t hurt his argument
any.”