Is Hillary Clinton thinking about a 3rd Party Candidacy?

"Win if you can, lose if you must, but always cheat." - Bobby "The Brain" Heenan

In looking over the strategy of the Clinton Campaign and their unwillingness to accept defeat I started thinking about how their tactics were reminiscent of Holy Joe Lieberman's when he was soundly defeated by Ned Lamont.

Lieberman knew he was going to lose and turned to Karl Rove for advice and help to defeat Lamont in a general election bid where after spending several terms as the elected Democratic Incumbent Senator from Connecticut he was now on the outside looking in. Ousted by his own party because of his pro-war and pro-Republican views, his only chance was to declare himself an Independent and torch the party that had so graciously elected him and appointed him to important committee chairs in the Senate.

Hillary too has now been a key member of the party establishment for a very long time. Just like with Joe, going into their races they both seemed inevitable locks to win. Anointed even before the primary opponents had been named.

Also like Joe she faced someone with a comparably new face in Washington politics and it turns out her message of basically more of the same has been turned away rather clearly by enough voters to warrant her exit from the race.

I admit the night after the March 4th primary I thought there was reason for Hillary to stick around but after the delegate counts ended up becoming official her win was so negligible that there's no way for her to make up ground now. Getting out is the only honorable thing to do for the party.

Of course this isn't about the party. If it were Hillary would have stepped down on March 5th when she saw that it was clear that she would lose.

No, this is about Hillary and the sense of entitlement which surrounds the Clintons. After having two terms as President they, much like the Bush regime, seem to believe they have some linear right to the White House.

When you listen to the Clinton camp, they make it clear that they will pull out all the stops to win. Dignity is secondary to their desire to win.

For example, when you hear about the Clinton camp arguing about the unfairness in seating Michigan or Florida's delegates you don't hear them talking about redoing the primaries altogether. Other media pundits have taken that idea up but the Clintons generally steer towards one direction, seating the delegates based on the already completed primary results. Why does that matter? Because in Michigan hers was the only name on the ballot.

Fairness means nothing to her campaign.

For quite a time they decided to forego worrying too much about winning the primaries to earn pledged delegates based on the will of the voters and were openly trying to court Superdelegates to circumvent the will of the people. Once that turned out to be viewed negatively and viewing the positive momentum of the Obama campaign Superdelegates started switching allegiance to Obama, her plan to blow the competition away with party insiders was shattered.

So onto plan C, so to speak. Trying to corrupt the process by going after pledged delegates.

Now there's nothing illegal about this process technically. Pledged delegates are not locked into the campaign that won them in the primary. However they generally do not switch and it would be a rarity for them to do so in such a way as to change election results.

Still it illustrates a point that needs to be made. It's very clear that Hillary is willing to stoop to any tactic that wins this race. They've already said they will go to the convention no matter the lead Obama has at that point and in doing so seem willing to pull apart the Democratic Party at the seams to get their way.

There seems to be more to this than meets the eye.

For as inept as their campaign has been this primary season they are not stupid. They have to know they cannot win even if they swept the rest of the primaries and made it to the convention with a closer count. Obama will still have the popular vote, delegate lead and superdelegate lead. The party will clearly give the nomination to him.

So what's in it for Hillary to keep this going?

How about playing the "they were unfair to me" ploy? Once they've exhausted all possible options in the Democratic primary they could conceivably state that due to how Michigan and Florida were handled, how the superdelegates are set up (ironic since they were the team that most actively courted the superdelegate scenario) and how the convention played out showed that there was no mandate for Obama in the Democratic Party and that she will run as a third party independent.

As a third party independent she will clearly cost Obama a lot of Democratic votes and probably the Presidency. Her hope is that she can win those older Democratic Women she has currently and then maybe run to the right of McCain which might be plausible with the way Right Wing hate radio cannot stand McCain and seem eager to cozy up to Hillary. Her winning even in that scenario seems implausible but if they muddy the waters a bit they at least have a shot which is more than they have now.

Would Hillary destroy her career in the Democratic Party to become an Independent? There's no guarantee she wouldn't. She has to have seen how Joe Lieberman winning as an Independent has held the Democrats in the Senate hostage to his one vote and this is a woman who loves wielding power.

Plus there's little doubt in my mind that the DLCers who have long been part of the Clinton regime wouldn't appreciate a pull away from a Democratic Party that has generally been shifting more and more to the left while completely isolating and eliminating any influence the DLC once had.

This could happen and ultimately could be the larger doomsday scenario towards the Democratic Party's chances at the White House in November than the elongated primary is.

And if you think Mark Penn's clients (Hillary and McCain) are doing tandem attacks now, wait until it's the general election.

-Rp