SHEPHERDSTOWN, W. Va. — Six miles south of Boonsboro, Maryland,
State Highway 34 passes through the town of Sharpsburg, and three
miles farther south crosses the Potomac River into West Virginia,
where it becomes Highway 480 and enters Shepherdstown, snuggled
against the river’s southern bank.
A few hundred yards east of the highway bridge, the Potomac is
shallow. There, at a place called Boteler’s Ford, Gen. Robert E.
Lee’s Confederate army crossed the river in its September 1862
retreat after fighting off Gen. George McClellan’s Union army at
Sharpsburg in a bloody stalemate known as the Battle of
Antietam.
Lee fought another small battle at Shepherdstown, a rear-guard
action that cost him five cannon. By inflicting a few hundred
casualties on his Union foes, however, Lee caused the cautious
McClellan to halt the pursuit and allow the Confederates to retreat
unmolested.
The history of Shepherdstown was probably unknown to the aide
that chose the site where Sen. Hillary Clinton kicked off her
campaign for next week’s West Virginia Democratic presidential
primary, following Tuesday’s split decision in North Carolina and
Indiana.
“We were very excited about our come-from-behind victory in
Indiana,” Clinton told a noontime crowd that gathered to see her
and daughter Chelsea at Shepherd University yesterday, adding that
“we came from about eight or so points behind to win.”
HER SUPPORTERS MAY have been encouraged by Hillary’s portrayal of
her Indiana win as a “come-from-behind victory,” but her slender
margin there — less than 19,000 votes, about 1.5 percent of the
votes cast — was a disappointment nearly as daunting as Sen.
Barack Obama’s crushing 14-point win in North Carolina.
True enough, polls in Indiana three weeks ago had shown Obama
leading by 5 points (rather than the “eight or so” Clinton claimed
yesterday), but that was before her big April 22 win in
Pennsylvania raised hopes of a Hillary comeback. The day before
Tuesday’s primary, Survey USA released a poll showing her ahead by
12 points in Indiana.
Hillary’s supporters cheered and chanted her name at the West
Virginia event, but reporters pounced at a post-rally press
conference, suggesting it might be time for her to strike the tent.
Does her vow to keep fighting, asked one network TV reporter, mean
that Clinton will continue her campaign all the way until the vote
on the convention floor in Denver?
“I’m staying in this race until there’s a nominee, and I
obviously am going to work as hard as I can to become that
nominee,” she answered. “So we will continue to contest these
elections and move forward.”
The reporter fired back with a follow-up question: “But what do
you say to those Democrats who fear that you’re putting the
Democratic Party’s chances at risk by…continuing to stay in?”
SUCH QUESTIONS CAUSED Rush Limbaugh (who claimed that his
“Operation Chaos” delivered Hillary’s margin of victory in Indiana)
to wonder why the “Drive-By Media” were so concerned with the
Democratic Party’s chances in November.
“All of these media types are demanding that Hillary drop out of
the race now … and the Drive-Bys are saying, ‘Get out of the
race to save the party.’ Now, what’s the party got to do with the
media? I ask rhetorically, of course,” Limbaugh told his listeners
after watching TV coverage of the Shepherdstown press
conference.
Despite disappointments and pressure from a press corps that
eagerly reported Democrats saying yesterday that her campaign is
now doomed, Hillary continued to suggest ways she could yet
win.
She insisted that the disallowed delegations from Michigan and
Florida be seated as a matter of “fundamental fairness … [to] two
important states that Democrats have to try to win in
November.”
Such a move would increase the convention total needed to win
the nomination — pushing back the goal posts for Obama, who is
currently calculated to be within 200 delegates of locking up the
nomination. Yet even Clinton’s own strategists were reported
yesterday as saying her chances are now almost a mathematical
impossibility.
The primary schedule, however, appears to give the Clinton
campaign two weeks of breathing room. Polls show Hillary heavily
favored to win in West Virginia on Tuesday and in Kentucky on May
20, the same day as the Oregon primary in which Obama is
favored.
A FEW MINUTES before Hillary’s Shepherdstown speech, Clinton
spokesman Mo Elleithee dismissed doomsayers in the media.
“The pundits have counted us out since Iowa,” he said. “The
funny thing about elections is, the voters get to make up their own
minds.”
Barring a decisive tsunami of superdelegate support to Obama,
the campaign will continue. As Clinton vowed to fight on in West
Virginia, she probably never pondered the historical significance
of the site.
Lee’s army suffered thousands of casualties at Antietam, and if
McClellan’s numerically superior force had pursued the retreating
Southerners, a decisive Union victory might have brought the war to
a swift conclusion. After Shepherdstown, however, McClellan was
content to let the Confederates continue their retreat, to fight
again another day.
The South still lost the war, but it lasted nearly three more
years.
