Earlier in the week there were reports that Obama had $30 in cash for the primary campaign and Hillary was down to $3 million with unpaid bills and her $5 million loan to herself still outstanding. Today a Chicago columnist posted this news:
Scoop du jour? Sneed hears major money problems in the Clinton camp may soon become a coroner knocking on her campaign door.
• To wit: Word is the cash feeding into Hillary Clinton's campaign coffers has not only slowed down in a big way, undisclosed campaign debts that have yet to be made public could signal the end and have insiders biting their nails.
Translation: "It won't necessarily be politics which may force her out of the race," said a top Dem source. "There is no hanky panky going on, but Hillary needs to raise money to stay alive . . . and word is she may not be able to climb out of the money hole."
• The buckshot: "I think it's safe to say Hillary's not going to dip into her pocket again," the source added. "And if her employees start taking pay cuts while chasing the dream . . . it's usually the beginning of the body becoming totally cold."
Hillary money
Peggy Noonan wrote in the Wall Street Journal today an interesting take on how the press traveling with HRC looks at her:
Many in the press get it, to their dismay, and it makes them uncomfortable, for it sours life to have a person whose character you feel you cannot admire play such a large daily role in your work. But I think it's fair to say of the establishment media at this point that it is well populated by people who feel such a lack of faith in Mrs. Clinton's words and ways that it amounts to an aversion. They are offended by how she and her staff operate. They try hard to be fair. They constantly have to police themselves.
Not that her staff isn't policing them too. Mrs. Clinton's people are heavy-handed in that area, letting producers and correspondents know they're watching, weighing, may have to take this higher. There's too much of this in politics, but Hillary's campaign takes it to a new level.
It's not only the press. It's what I get as I walk around New York, which used to be thick with her people. I went to a Hillary fund-raiser at Hunter College about a month ago, paying for a seat in the balcony and being ushered up to fill the more expensive section on the floor, so frantic were they to fill seats.
I sat next to a woman, a New York Democrat who'd been for Hillary from the beginning and still was. She was here. But, she said, "It doesn't seem to be working." She shrugged, not like a brokenhearted person but a practical person who'd missed all the signs of something coming. She wasn't mad at the voters. But she was no longer so taken by the woman who soon took the stage and enacted joy.
The other day a bookseller told me he'd been reading the opinion pages of the papers and noting the anti-Hillary feeling. Two weeks ago he realized he wasn't for her anymore. It wasn't one incident, just an accumulation of things. His experience tracks this week's Wall Street Journal/NBC poll showing Mrs. Clinton's disapproval numbers have risen to the highest level ever in the campaign, her highest in fact in seven years.
Noonan
One last bad item: The New Hampshire Union-Leader took great offense to Bill's comments about the state, particularly since it is practically the only thing that kept her campaign alive earlier this year.
Ever since Bill Clinton proclaimed himself "the Comeback Kid" for his second-place finish in the 1992 New Hampshire Democratic primary, he has portrayed himself as a stalwart defender of New Hampshire and its first-in-the-nation tradition. He championed this state's retail politics as a model for the nation and made sure he maintained his ties here in preparation for his wife's inevitable future presidential run.
Those relationships paid off handsomely in January, when Hillary Clinton, who had spent more than a year fawning over New Hampshire's great electoral traditions, won here with the strong backing of the Democratic Party establishment.
Now, having used New Hampshire as the launching pad for both of their presidential bids, the Clintons have no more use for us. And so it was that on Monday, Bill Clinton threw New Hampshire and our Democratic Secretary of State Bill Gardner under the proverbial bus.
To justify his claim that Florida and Michigan delegates should be seated at the Democratic National Convention, the former President said, "We let New Hampshire go out of turn. They had a Democratic secretary of state. The Florida voters are totally innocent. They asked to vote on time."
To the Clintons, rewriting history is as simple as repeating their own talking points until they become accepted as facts. But the truth is that the Clintons happily accepted the bumped-up New Hampshire primary at the time because they perceived it gave Hillary an advantage. Hillary Clinton even signed a pledge to not campaign or participate in the Michigan or Florida primaries. That pledge was meant to punish those two states for moving up their primary dates, and she knew it.
But it was not sincere. It was one point of the famous Clinton triangulation. And before you knew it, Sen. Clinton was participating in both the Michigan and Florida primaries, which, of course, she won by violating her pledge.
Now, needing those delegates, she and her husband innocently claim that it was the sneaky New Hampshire Secretary of State Bill Gardner who broke the DNC rules, victimizing poor, helpless Florida and Michigan. And the DNC let him get away with it only because he is a Democrat.
Bill the turncoat
Now I know that just as it seems darkest before the dawn, somehow Hillary needs to be pushed to the brink of elimination (Texas, Ohio, New Hampshire) before she responds and gets her campaign in gear. But the cumulative effect of all this on a day when she gets bad news from Casey, Leahy, Dodd, etc.... Well, it ALMOST makes me feel sorry for her.
The bus tour Obama has already started, if it's well-received and cuts into her lead in that state, could be the final nail....
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