From an NYT report today:
Two senior advisers and one close ally said they would urge her to quit the race if she lost Indiana two weeks later, on May 6.
This meme - that if Clinton loses Indiana and/or North Carolina on May 5, she should drop out - is dangerously close to becoming the conventional wisdom, in the media and the party. The Clintons know this and are fighting back vigorously on any suggestion that the nomination race shouldn't be allowed to continue until, well, November if it damn well needs to. Expect them to make plenty of excited references to Puerto Rico in the coming weeks.
UPDATE: HRC on Saturday:
“You know, we are in the fourth quarter and it is a close contest. We
are running up and down. We are taking shots,” Mrs. Clinton said,
speaking over a crescendo of applause. “And in the next months, we’re
going to have 10 more contests, from Indiana to Pennsylvania — all the
way to Puerto Rico!
My question to you is this:
If this is slowly becoming the conventional wisdom, if Mrs. C's donors are so spooked as to enter into an ill-advised attempted nudging of Nancy Pelosi, if she's so far in debt that, according to Politico, she's beginning to stretch debts to non-political creditors further than would be usual or fair... is it possible that her donors will force her out of the race after a specified point (say May 6) rather than the Democratic Party themselves having to have a go at it?
Posted by: Lawrence Page | March 31, 2008 at 12:26 AM