Two words come to mind when assessing Clinton's apparent strategy to wait the primaries out till bigger, more fertile states: Rudy. Giuliani.Indeed. I made the same exact comparison in my preceding post. But Sullivan's wrong: if this is Clinton's strategy, it's actually way, way stupider than Rudy's strategy. Rudy's strategy presupposed that Romney, Huckabee, McCain, Thompson, and Paul would all be fighting each other for delegates and that none would have a clear advantage going into Florida. And it wasn't just that the central premise of his strategy failed him--McCain did emerge as a plausible choice--but even if a frontrunner had not emerged, there was really no reason to expect Giuliani to be able to win the states he wanted to. Not getting news cycles for a long time just makes it seem like you're out of the race.
But Hillary isn't the frontrunner facing off against a half-dozen or so also-rans. She's facing one person who has had some incredible momentum in the past few weeks (and she isn't even the frontrunner, according to recent polls). Intrade now gives her about a 38% chance of winning the nomination. Now, she's literally giving away delegates. In other words, she doesn't seem like a candidate going full steam ahead on the way to victory in November--she seems like a candidate that has resigned herself to being beaten. She's going to make a good show of it, and she might win a primary or two along the way--West Virginia, perhaps Oregon, maybe Texas--before bowing out in June after Obama's lead in pledged delegates (and maybe even superdelegates, by that point) forces her to leave. But anything can happen, and in this race, it frequently has.
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By the way, what in God's name is going on with the Republicans? It seems that they've not gotten the memo about John McCain being the nominee, and so far Kansas and Louisiana have both gone for Mike Huckabee, and Washington State is still very close. If McCain were to be swept five days after seemingly clinching the nomination--if he still cannot win anything in the South--he's in a spot of trouble. I just wonder what Huck's game is. He's not bleeding off votes from Romney any more. Is he trying to prove himself further to McCain for the VP slot? Maybe he's trying to get enough delegates to force McCain to give him the VP spot because he doesn't trust McCain to do it on his own, which is rather devious and potentially dangerous if he doesn't succeed. Or maybe Huckabee's just crazy? That cannot be discounted.
Here's what I think: if Huck really wants to be McCain's running mate, he'll drop out after the next major McCain victory. He can't very well do it tomorrow, not after winning, and theoretically he's got momentum from tonight. But after McCain's next big victory, he could pack it in without much controversy. So wait for McCain's next big night--presumably before he locks down the nomination for good, as then it would be too late for his dropping out to have any effect. As the movie says, "When the fall's all that's left, it matters." I have to believe that Huckabee realizes he's done and just wants to exit gracefully. Then again, if he gets a positive round of press coverage after this, and if he manages to get a nontrivial bump in the polls...maybe he'll start to believe he can become President. And he can't, but if he can win a couple of big winner-take-all primaries along the way, he can make life pretty miserable for McCain's campaign. Which is good news for Democrats. And maybe for Huckabee as well, if he wants to run for President again in 2012...
