Last week, HRC called North Carolina a gamechanger, saying that NC would be sending a strong message to the nation about who the democrats want as their next president. When I heard it, I was immediately and deeply puzzled. Why would she say something like that when she knows that she has little chance of winning the state? She didn't even mention Indiana, suggesting that NC would change the game regardless of what happened in Indiana.
I thought about it for a bit, and then I came to a possible explanation. By calling NC a gamechanger, knowing the steep odds of winning, HRC was providing herself with an exit strategy for bowing out of the race on her own terms.
More below.
Watching coverage of the Jefferson-Davis dinner on Saturday night, what I heard from both Evan Bayh and HRC seemed jarringly odd. In introducing HRC, Evan Bayh seemed to talk more like Obama's endorser rather than HRC's. He actually complimented Obama for helping to register so many new democrats in Indiana, and he tried to get the audience to applaud Obama's efforts. They did so rather tepidly, but, still, I thought that was an odd thing to do when he was supposed to be introducing HRC.
Then, it got even odder when HRC started to speak. For the first part of her speech, she talked generally about the need to rally behind the eventual democratic nominee and to unify the party. She was gracious and conciliatory, and it sounded a lot like a concession speech. Of course, in the second part of her speech, she then started to talk about herself and why she deserved the nomination, but I still thought her speech didn't sound like a speech someone who is dead set on winning the nomination would make.
I immediately thought about the HRC gamechanger quote and here's my exit strategy theory. The gamechanger quote is actually brilliant, because it allows her simultaneously to show that she's still in it to win but then also give her a way out of the race on her own terms, which I believe is something very important for her, as I'll explain below.
The way I see it, just before her gamechanging quote, she realized that she's running out of money and all the paths to a possible victory were closing in on her. In sports terms, it was 4th down and 20 on the 50 yard line with 20 seconds left. Instead of going for the first down and hoping to get in one or two more plays, she decides to go for the hail mary, do or die play. So, she decides to put everything into winning both Indiana and NC. She is assuming that she can win Indiana, and then it's about doing what she can to either make NC close or to outright win it. If she could do that, then indeed, it would be a game changer.
I honestly believe that, just a few days ago, Clinton realistically believed she could do well in NC, because Obama was still reeling from Wright-gate and from his loss in PA. The msm was also obsessing non-stop about Wright and talking about whether Obama has a bubba problem. And, of course, she had her gas tax holiday play, a sure fire political pander guaranteed to win over the low-information white working class voters.
So, she sends Bill on a non-stop tour of rural NC to try and personally appeal for every white vote while in Indiana, she goes full throttle in pitching her gas tax holiday.
And through all of this, if she could make NC a close, single digit loss and win Indiana, then, here's the narrative she could start selling to the superdelegates and also start implementing her nuclear option plan:
- Obama has been losing momentum since Texas/Ohio, and his poor showing in NC and Indiana proves that that trend is continuing;
- She will then argue that he's become unelectable because of Reverend Wright and bitter-gate. Those scandals show that he's another aloof, liberal elitist in the Kerry/Dukakis mold who'll go down in flames against the repubs.
- On the other hand, she'll argue that she's much more electable because she's reinvented herself ala Bill Clinton into a republican lite candidate who will be able to secure the Reagan democrats in her new populist, fighter persona. And as proof of that: the success of her gas tax holiday in garnering white working class votes in Indiana and North Carolina.
- She'd also argue that Obama would be considered weak on foreign policy and that would also make him vulnerable in the general election. On the other hand, with her talk of obliterating Iran and massive retaliation, she's showing that the right won't be able to attack her as weak on national security issues.
After laying all of that out and showing that Obama would be a total disaster in the general election, then she could put forth her nuclear option plan and make it seem like the logical thing to do to ensure her the nomination and to save the democratic party from disaster.
Of course, none of the things that needed to happen in order for her to convince the superdelegates to vote for her and her nuclear option plan happened tonight. She's getting blown out in North Carolina and she might not even win Indiana. Her gas tax policy plan completely backfired on her, and Bill's marathon campaigning in NC failed. And worse, they've now spent their 10 million windfall after PA. The hail mary has failed.
But, by calling NC a gamechanger, she not only created the metric to define victory and momentum for her, she also created the metric to define failure and loss for her as well. Because if she failed in NC, then, that means she failed to change the game in the way she herself defined the game, and therefore, she can then say here is why I'm leaving the race - because I didn't meet my own standard for staying in the race.
And thus the gamechanging comment could provide for her the reason for her dropping out in a way that makes sense, given her own definition of success or failure in North Carolina. She will be able to leave the race on her own terms, which I think is very important for her to save face and dignity. It would have been humiliating for her to have been perceived to have been forced to stop her campaign by public pressure from democratic party officials and colleagues in the Senate. But, now, because of her gamechanger frame of the NC election, she can concede and say with all honest that she chose to stop her campaign, for the good of the democratic party, because she set for herself a metric for success and she didn't reach it, not because she ran out of money. It's a way to mend her reputation and good will among democrats.
If my theory is right, then, she will concede before the next primary in West Virginia. I'll actually go out on a limb and say that she may even concede tonight or tomorrow. Why? Because if she does, she can concede without revealing her finances showing she's out of money, and before the superdelegates start coming out in droves for Obama.
I don't think she's going to pursue the nuclear option, because, even if she did win and got FL and MI delegates seated, she knows there still no chance of winning, especially because she knows that there is no way she can convince the undeclared superdelegates to vote en masse for her, and also get Obama superdelegates to switch sides. There would absolutely be no point in using a nuclear option that will end just dragging her reputation through the mud even further, so that she can fight a no-win situation.
It's over, and it's not a question of if but when she will drop out of the race.