Mark Halperin's page over at Time.com about sums it up.
This is most unfortunate. The next step for the blogger community, which has been so successful in helping Senator Obama's campaign to reach presumptive nominee status, is to help push back against Senator Clinton's attempts to change the rules of the nomination fight near the end of the game. Now is not the time to stop fighting for this nomination. We still have work to do to secure it.
Check this out from Mark Halperin's page:
"I’m Staying In This Race Until There’s a Nominee"
Getty
A determined Clinton tells reporters in West Virginia she has no plans of bowing out:
"It’s still early.... This is a dynamic electoral environment."
"I feel really good coming off our victory in Indiana... It’s a new day, it’s a new state, it’s a new election."
Disagrees she is hurting the party by staying in the race:
"We traditionally have gone longer than you’ve seen in the last couple of cycles, and there isn’t any problem in closing ranks and unifying."
Endorses view that the delegate threshold should be about 2,210 to include Michigan and Florida, again points to her successes in traditional swing states.
Earlier: the Senator returns to the campaign trail, holding rally with her daughter in Shepherdstown. Makes no mention of North Carolina or Sen. Obama. Permalink
It's clear now. Regardless of whether or not she's staying in because she thinks that she's the democrat's best hope for a fall victory, whether or not she's doing it for her legacy and Bill's or whether she really truly is egomanical, she's in this race for the long haul.
We need to be prepare ourselves for the fact that the Clinton stacked Rules and Bylaws committee will probably come up with an unacceptable solution to the Florida/Michigan fiasco designed to benefit their favored candidate. Fortunately, Obama has a likely majority of the pledged delegates on the credentials committee. I think we probably have to steady ourselves now for a fight at the credentials commitee meeting in June followed by a fight to not seat Florida/Michigan in an unfair way on August 25th. That vote will take place the first night of the convention in August and will be a test vote for who will win the nomination. Much like the Mondale/Hart procedural vote in 1984 and Kennedy/Carter procedural votes in 1980.
From watching the presser, reading the reaction to it from Mark and from all that we know about Hillary Clinton, I think she's indicating that she's likely going to take this all the way to the convention floor.
We have the popular vote, the people's will, and a majority of the delegates. But, make no mistake, Senator Clinton just declared that she has no intention of making this easy for us.
This is just fucking terrible. I was esctastic last night thinking that we had won (Obama supporters). Now, she's moving the goal posts to 2,208 and celebrating a great "tiebreaker" victory.
Fight on Obama supporters! It's not over yet. How so?:
- Keep phonebanking to the upcoming states. Let's give Obama some landslide victories in MT, SD, and OR.
- Keep donating to him. I just donated $250 to his campaign. I might give $50 more after reading about Clinton's presser.
- Write supportive letters about Obama to local papers.
- Help convince more of your friends and family to support him.
We will overcome the Clintons but we're not there yet!