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Will Hillary Campaign For Barack If He Gets The Nomination?
Hillary is determined to win the nomination. We all know that. In fact, her team held a day-long meeting with their key fundraisers in Washington yesterday which you can read about here.
Hillary spoke soon after noon to her top money people. "She took questions for most of the time," the fundraiser says, adding that she projected an "upbeat" air and that she said, "I'm a fighter, when I get knocked down, I get right up, we're gonna win this."
Now, some of us are happy about her determination to win, while others of us are not.
But here, for me, is the unanswered question of the day:
Will Hillary Clinton campaign to elect Barack Obama President of the United States if he gets the nomination?
And by "campaign" I mean work really hard... making the case over and over again for how much better America - and the rest of the world - will be if Barack Obama is president instead of John McCain.
I ask this question because Hillary has shifted so completely into "make Barack appear unelectable in the minds of the Super Delegates" mode that I find my mind flooded with questions:
How in the world would she campaign for him? (Can someone help someone win after putting so much energy into driving up his negatives?)
How would she help him win the big states that she has won? (Does she even admit in her mind -- after saying that only she can win the big states - that Barack could also win California? New York? Massachusetts? .... especially with her help?)
And the final question on my mind: Would she campaign for him at all?
With Hillary's strategy being to tear down Barack -- rather than try to convince the voters she will do more for them than he will -- I have a real problem seeing how she will flip that into helping him in the general election.
It's almost as if Hillary is telling us that unless she gets the nomination she will leave the Democratic Party... because a Barack Obama candidacy would be so unacceptable to her.
Of course, as far as I know, Hillary has no plans to leave the Democratic Party.
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UPDATE: Friday, 1:40am Eastern
Barack Obama has consistently said Hillary Clinton is a capable person and that he will support her for president if she gets the nomination. You can watch him say that on CNN below, in an interview conducted after he won the Mississippi primary this week Tuesday.
Follow Steven G. Brant on Twitter: www.twitter.com/SteveBrant
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Is a woman president a great idea? YES! Is Hillary that women? NO.
As a President, HRC would set a horrible example and both the party and her gender will suffer signifcant set-backs as a result.
The Democrats held a 100-seat advantage in the House of Rrepresents when the Clintons took office. That incredibly lead, which had held for 40 years, was lost in just 2 years by the Clintons.
We should never forget.
nazgul, I think you should go back and really study the history of that time before you simplify it down to being Bill's fault, or you can just continue to parrot NeoCon talking points that usually always start with "It's Bill's fault..." no matter what the problem.
I suggest the writer of this piece replace each Barack Obama with Hillary Clinton and vice versa and ask the same question will Barack Obama campaign for Hillary is she gets the nomination? Why is this a one-way deal?
It's a one way deal because he is going to be the nominee. not her.
HuffPost's Pick
will Barack Obama campaign for Hillary is she gets the nomination? Why is this a one-way deal?
__________
I don't know if he will or not, but if he does he will have a much easier time sounding sincere, since he never said that John McCain is more qualified to be president than Hillary.
With Hillary, you never know what she might do. She won't be McCain's running mate, as some have sarcastically suggested, but she may decide to do a Lieberman and mount and independent campaign.
Obama already has said he would campaign for the Democratic candidate whoever won.
See Steven G. Brant's Profile
I have now updated my piece to include a video of Barack Obama saying he will support her becoming president if she gets the nomination. This was in an interview conducted on this week Tuesday night, after he won the Mississippi primary.
See Steven G. Brant's Profile
I have updated my piece to show proof that Barack has said Hillary is a capable candidate and that he will support her if she gets the nomination.
Oh, I don't think that will be an issue -- Sen. Obama and his supporters have made it pretty clear that they really don't want anyone over 50 around unless you're willing to suspend the healthy dose of cynicism you develop after being around for that long.
Does your statement help the Democratic Party? You've just insulted everyone over fifty, and in short, said that Obama and his supporters won't support Hillary if she wins the nomination.
While you may think that Obama is cleaner than Hillary, don't think for a second that his supporters are cleaner than hers.
Read these posts, Obama backers are constantly saying horendous things about Hillary, and many times about her supporters, and then comes the wave of back patting self congradulations by the hordes of commenters. And sprinkled into this mix is a handful of Hillary supporters most of whom defend Hillary but don't openly attack Obama because when it comes down to it we're all on the same side at the big dance.
You guys keep saying she should bow out for the good of the party. Never mind that this race is a lot closer than HuffPo and you guys want to think. The thing that really gets down and digs at me is that you sit here and say vile things about Hillary, things she would never say about Obama, then you say "well if she wins I'll vote for McCain or not at all" like your trying to blackmail the rest of the Democrats into voting for your candidate. And after all that you're going to suggest that someone else do something for the good of the Democratic party?
Hillary Clinton is going to do what the Clintons were doing for a long time before Obama was on the scene and that is support the party. If Hillary wins the nomination then she's gonna need Obama's support and the support of his backers to go against the Republicans. And the same is true for Obama. But us Hillary supporters aren't threatening to destroy our party because we don't get our way in the nomination process. Even though we gotta sit here and hear all these Obama backers just tear her to pieces, and many times us as well.
So tell an old geezer like me who's the cynic youngster? The person who says "well Hillary didn't win the nomination so I'll go ahead and support Obama" or the person who says " well Obama didn't win the nomination so who cares I quit!"
WebForce1, take a deep breath. I insulted no one, least of all a very large group of people that of which I'm a part. I made my comment because it's exactly how I feel after the harangue of the Obama supporters over the last few months as well as being told directly by the candidate that he intends to leave "...all of those old fights behind". At this point I really don't care who wins the nomination because neither of them is going to address the problems I think this country faces, or if they will, they have told me that they will. I refer to prosecuting the criminals from the Bushies, starting with Bush and Cheney; restoring the balance of power by dismantling the Unitary Executive that Darth and Addington have created; and restoring the Bill of Rights to us, the citizens and, well, you get the idea.
McCain- Clinton 2008.
Simple...s
Ya know...thi
I have some suspicion that you are right. It is consistent with the carelessness of her campaign in regards to the well being of the party, the only consequence of which can be either Clinton or Obama losing. On to 2012.
The ironic thing is that both Obama and Clinton have apparently taken some cues from Republican campaign methods. The difference is that while Barack has picked up the RIGHT lesson from the Repubs, Hillary seems to have picked up the wrong ones.
Obama and David Axelrod seem to have utilized the one positive lesson from the Republican playbook: Streamiline your message into an easily-digestable form. It doesn't get more streamlined than "Change".
Hillary and Mark Penn, on the other hand, seem to be taking in all the negative lessons from that same book. Let's review, shall we?
Fearmongering? Check.
Low blow attacks? Check.
Preying on people's prejudices (i.e. the Barack in Muslim garb pic)? Check.
Playing the victim with regard to the media (or, as Eric Alterman calls it ,"working the refs")? Check.
I retain faith that the Dems will win in November, but she sure as hell isn't making their job any easier.
When Obama gets the nomination he does not need HRC to help him be elected. There are better politicos that can be her surrogates and who never tried to intentionally hurt Sen. Obama. She will only be a sad reminder to all of us that are so disappointed in her .As a figure with such high negatives she should just disappear from the scene. If she really wants Obama to President let her keep a low profile after the nomination.
He isnt gonna be elected he does not have a prayer.
Right. Never mind all the pesky math and analysis that he has 1) the best shot at winning the nomination and 2) he is the stronger candidate against McCain and would beat McCain in the GE.
The only one who doesn't have a prayer of being elected is the the person who fails to get the nomination!
If Hillary Clinton is not nominated, not only will she not campaign for Obama, she will not run for re-election as Senator from New York.
Her only interest is in becoming President. Everything else is a means to that end.
sounds about right.
What the hell are you talking about? Her senate term doesn't end 'til 2012.
Here's my non-professional prediction:
1) Clinton loses the nomination, even though she will fight all the way to the convention floor. She will not at all be prepared for the loss. Every step of the way, she will blind herself to anything but absolute victory. She will be caught off balance.
2) Once she discovers that she has lost the nomination, she will not appear at all at the convention.
3) She will meet with her advisors and consider a run as an independant, ignoring that many of the deadlines that will have already passed for her to file as an independant.
4) Many of her supporters will walk out of the convention because many of them cannot imagine anyone other than Clinton running for President.
Why Steve as far as I know I would campaign for Sen. Obama, as far as I know
Hillary will campaign for Barack, Barack will campaign for Hillary. How their supporters react is a different story, sense supporters don't live by the code of the Senate.
Even if she does, how effective can she be? How can she effectively campaign for someone running against a person who she said just months before was more qualified?
Of course she CAN campaign for Obama, but she's already rendered any campaigning she would do meaningless.
hillary is a democrat?
I honestly do not know. I guess so. The Clintons take one election at the time. This time is the primary: they will do anything, I mean ANYTHING to win it. They don't care if they destroy the democratic party in the process, they will do anything to win it. They're not even thinking about the general. They will cross that bridge when they get there.
If Obama wins the nomination, I am pretty sure the Clintons will help him. But will it be too late? Will they have done too much damage already? I am afraid that the healing of the democratic party will be tough and long.
If we loose in the general, it will be because of the Clintons. If Obama is the nominee, he might be too damage by comments such as he is not ready to be commander-in-chief. If Hillary is the nominee, she will have so alienated the African-American and the youth, on top of unite the republicans, that she might loose too.
Maybe a dream ticket, but is it too late?
Bush screwed up the country so bad that the democratic party was supposed to have decades of majority in power. Now, the Clintons screwed the democratic party so bad that, we might have just the opposite.
Very sad.
She will have alienated just about everyone besides very old women who want to so badly to see a female in the white house before they die that they'll resort to voting for Hillary Clinton. I don't know anyone, young, old, black, white, male or female who is happy with what the Clintons are doing right now.
To all the Michelle talk:
The issue is not WHETHER they will campaign for Hillary. The fact is that they still CAN still credibly campaign for Hillary because they haven't said that the republican is a better choice than Hillary.
Because of the Clinton campaign's stance towards Obama, Hillary doesn't even have the option of credibly campaigning for Obama because it won't be very hard for the republicans to point out that she didn't think he was such a hot choice months ago. As a matter of fact, even if she doesn't campaign for him, the republicans are going to use her statements against the democratic nominee. So, her statements are either incredibly naive or reveal just how much this campaign is about her desire to get elected. Either way is unfortunate. But, let's me suggest that Hillary and her campaign certainly aren't naive, which really leaves one reason for why they are doing this. Because its either her way or no way. I don't want someone who thinks like that representing me.
I honestly do not know. I guess so. The Clintons take one election at the time. This time is the primary: they will do anything, I mean ANYTHING to win it. They don't care if they destroy the democratic party in the process, they will do anything to win it. They're not even thinking about the general. They will cross that bridge when they get there.
If Obama wins the nomination, I am pretty sure the Clintons will help him. But will it be too late? Will they have done too much damage already? I am afraid that the healing of the democratic party will be tough and long.
If we loose in the general, it will be because of the Clintons. If Obama is the nominee, he might be too damage by comments such as he is not ready to be commander-in-chief. If Hillary is the nominee, she will have so alienated the African-American and the youth, on top of unite the republicans, that she might loose too.
Maybe a dream ticket, but is it too late?
Bush screwed up the country so bad that the democratic party was supposed to have decades of majority in power. Now, the Clintons screwed the democratic party so bad that, we might have just the opposite.
Very sad.
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