This Telegraph piece reports that Hillary Clinton could be a potential secretary of health and human services in an Obama Administration. Umm...I said the same thing three weeks ago. Well, I said HHS plus a SCOTUS opening when it happens (presumably after healthcare is passed), which seems like a pretty sweet deal from where I'm sitting.
I think that today's meeting pretty much ended Clinton's (admittedly remote) chances of winning the nomination. I expected a 69-59 Michigan Split and a halving of Florida's delegates. She didn't even get that. Substantively, it does not change the outcome of the race.
However, psychologically, the last of her trump cards is gone. Harold Ickes says that she reserves the right to take this to the convention, but under what logic? The full delegations from the states have been seated. They have been penalized as is fair--it's equivalent to what the Republicans did. They get half votes instead of full votes. Somehow, the Jim Crow argument just doesn't hold anymore. Perhaps she will transition into an argument against a slave-like 3/5 representation. That would be distasteful, but I think that the power of Clinton's "the votes must be counted" argument is more persuasive than "all the votes must be counted for more." It exposes that this "principle" is merely self-serving, as it always was.
So, basically, the last strategic tool on Clinton's behalf is gone. All she can hope for is a superdelegate stampede along the lines of 200+, which is a bit unlikely.
