The American Spectator

Print Email

Text Size

Campaign Crawlers

(Page 2 of 2)

Cottle called her collection an "elegy," but elegies are for the dead, and Clinton refuses to go quietly to the political graveyard.

"I've been declared dead so many times, and luckily it's been premature, and I'm hoping it stays premature," Hillary said during a televised hour long town hall event Friday in Portland, Ore.

THAT HILLARY HAD that hour to herself signaled the Obama campaign's confidence that they've got the nomination locked. Portland's KGW-TV had originally wanted to have a debate between the two candidates. When Obama refused the invitation, the station gave Clinton the whole hour.

Oregon has an unusual mail-in election system and, as of Friday, only 22 percent of voters had sent in their ballots for tomorrow's primary. When Obama ceded Hillary that hour of free TV time, polls showed him leading in Oregon by as many as 20 percentage points. However, an American Research Group poll taken late last week indicated the race might be tightening, with Obama leading Hillary by only a 50-45 margin.

Meanwhile, Clinton expects another West Virginia-sized landslide tomorrow in Kentucky, where polls show her leading by a whopping 30 percentage points. So even as Obama begins campaigning as the nominee-to-be, Clinton keeps winning primaries.

Since March 11, when Obama won the Mississippi primary, Hillary's record is 3-1-1 (including a May 3 tie in Guam) with all three of her victories in swing states Democrats need to win in November.

Obama will spend tomorrow night in Iowa, where he expects to claim the nomination on the basis of having won a majority of pledged delegates -- a calculation that doesn't count Florida or Michigan.

Some observers suggest Clinton's fight-to-the-end rhetoric is merely strategic, that she's seeking leverage to get a payoff of her campaign debts or positioning herself for a possible 2012 comeback should Obama fall short in November. At least in public, however, Hillary hasn't stopped thinking about victory tomorrow.

"If I'd listened to people a month ago, three weeks ago, last week," she told her Portland TV audience Friday, "you wouldn't be here trying to make up your minds about who you're going to vote for."

topics:
Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, NATO