Would Clinton run as an independent?
Richard Thompson must be high on some potent chronic if he thinks Hillary Clinton could mount a successful third-party run:
If she went about it right, she would probably start out ahead of where Ross Perot started in 1992. She could count on a large, committed campaign structure in all 50 states and probably a 20 to 30 percent share of the polls. She would have all the media coverage she wanted.
A three-way race lowers the threshold for victory. Her husband won the presidency with 43 percent of the vote. If she took enough of those big blue states like New York, Ohio, and California, she could let Obama take the Washingtons and Maines and McCain could have the south.
The rift that has opened is basically an organic result of the party-within-a-party that is her campaign, a core of powerful, professional leaders and consultants who know how things work. If they could find the money, I suspect many of them would push for it.
In the fall, the force of the issues would continue to buoy up both her campaign as well as Obama’s; There’s plenty of disaffection to go around, and it’s an expanding group. The pie, as they say, is getting higher.
She could appeal to a ‘vast’ middle ground that’s uncomfortable continuing Bush’s policies, as McCain inevitably would, but that is equally unwilling to go with the unknown reformist, progressive path that Obama represents. Hillary Clinton would attempt to offer the best of both worlds: an orderly revolution.
Thompson correctly notes that Clinton would have a hard time getting a significant chunk of the “independent vote,” but figures that is off-set by the her deep base of support within the Democratic Party, as well as the disaffected voters who are turned off by both McCain and Obama. Which leads me to think that Thompson has no idea what he’s talking about.
The vast majority of Clinton supporters are more concerned with seeing a Democrat win the White House than they are with Hillary Clinton winning the White House. That’s why a good majority of Clinton supporters would vote for Obama in an Obama v. McCain match up. If Clinton were to run as an independent, she could not count on her supporters in the primaries to give her support in the general.
More importantly is what I mentioned last week. If Hillary Clinton were to run as an independent, she would destroy her and her husband’s legacy in the Democratic Party. They would be utter pariahs. And since Hillary Clinton is surely looking for some way to maintain her influence within the party, I doubt she would ruin herself by running as an independent.
Agreed. It is not going to happen. Another point to consider is the fact that her campaign has a huge debt (more than $20 million and still counting). They know it very well that the writing is on the wall and what they are doing right now is more of public posturing to increase their leverage and bargaining position with Obama campaign.
Do you think Clinton is bargaining for the VP spot? It seems like that’s the case, but she must know that the chances are slim that Obama would give it to her.
All of the evidence is pointing in this direction. She believes and will claim that she has won the popular vote. Even if she has not actually won the popular vote, her message to the country and the democratic party will be that she can not let down all of the people that voted for her and made this primary process such a closely run event. Add to this logic Hillary’s knowledge that all politicians have a shelf life for presidential potential and that this may be her only real chance to run for the presidency and furthermore, that Hillary is likely to be feeling abandoned by her party and stabbed in the back by it’s super delegates who have once again run to the side of a flash in the pan who in her eyes and the eyes of her supporters doesn’t even have the experience to hold his current position as a senator.
This possibility has been in my mind for several weeks now but was solidified by Hillary’s agreement to allow Obama to receive delegates from a state where he was not even on the ballot. This suggests to me that Hillary, although resigned to her loss in the democratic primary, by remaining in the campaign after such an act, clearly she is in this fight for the duration and her only remaining alternative is to run as an independent.
Doing so allows Hillary to continue campaign against Obama, whom she honestly believes would be a detriment to the oval office and McCain who she is against for philosophical reasons. Running as an independent also allows Hillary to honor her supporters in the most politically expedient manner and would gain her a great deal of respect and potential support from independent voters and borderline republicans alike.
Finally it would feed into the angry, spiteful and vindictive nature that is so much a part of Hillary the person, allowing her to stick it to the party and those super delegates she sees as having ridden the coattails of the Clinton name for far too long to be cast aside by them at the last minute for somebody she considers to be yet another weak democratic presidential candidate that cannot possibly win in the general election.
What could the Democratic Party possibly offer her to appease her at this point? What could they possibly bring to the table that she could not attain on her own?
Hillary Clinton will not stop her campaign, she will run as an independent and destroy the democratic parties presidential hopes and possibly create another presidential run opportunity for herself in the process, even if she does not win, and she certainly could still pull off a win…
Everytime we underestimate a Clinton, they seem to come out swinging and surprise us all!
Ha! Clinton supporters want a democrat in the white House more than anything? Ha! I am anti Obama and have been for months. He is a crook, a cheat and a liar and going down with Chicago bad guys! Down, down, down. I would vote for Clinton as an independent in a heart beat because the democratic party is dead. They have slit their own throats on this one and this is the last time people like me buy the loser candidate they want to display. If I cannot vote Hillary, my choice has always been McCain for #2. Obama has long been #0 for me. Why not vote for an Independent Hillary Clinton, even if it means McCain wins. At least it means no Obama who is the worst candidate in the history of the country! Go Hillary, and Independent Hillary, an independent woman, just like alot of us!
I say she should run as an indepenent… She has my vote. Every time I think of voting for Obama.. I just think of his church .. and not so much because of the chuch itself, but the way he lied and had to speech his way out of it a couple of days later… I don’t think in his heart he has cut all ties with a 20 year affair with this church….