LITTWIN: For Clinton, it all depends on the meaning of 'win'

By Mike Littwin, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

In case you missed it, the Democrats held another round of primaries Tuesday night.

Hillary Clinton won one state, and, to no one's surprise, Barack Obama won another. You can probably spot a trend here.

And if the whole process is starting to wear on you, don't worry. It's over in two weeks. And guess what - everyone wins.

It took me a while - a long, long while - but I've finally figured this race out. The problem wasn't picking a winner. It has been clear for a long while now that Obama, with his steady delegate lead, has a lock on the nomination this summer at the Pepsi Center.

The question has been how Clinton could, at the same time, avoid losing, which matters - and not just to Clinton, but to all those rabid Clintonistas. It even matters, strangely, to Obama.

And now, suddenly, the path has come clear.

It all depends, of course, on what your definition of winning is. And Clinton has redefined winning - for her at least - to mean merely finishing. To win, she doesn't have to get to the finish line first. She just has to get there, period.

And she will get there - sometime around June 3, somewhere in Montana or South Dakota - despite everyone who (she says) insisted she get out of the race - the pundits and the cynics, the naysayers, the talking heads, the Clash, the vast right-wing conspiracy, the vast left-wing conspiracy and anyone else I might have left out.

She has claimed her own kind of victory by doggedly refusing to concede that she has not won (or, to put it another way, that she is about to, uh, lose). And, in the end, or near the end anyway, no one has the nerve to tell her anything different.

In fact, Obama has given up trying to tell Clinton that the race is over - and not a Kentucky minute too soon.

I don't know if the long race has helped or hurt him, whether it has toughened him up or just roughed him up. But I know it's not just bitter, hard-working Appalachian white people - and by the way, 20 percent of Kentucky voters said race was an important issue - Obama has to worry about winning over.

If we couldn't avoid race in this campaign, we couldn't avoid gender either. And if you listen closely, whether it's to Bill Clinton or to the, uh, estimable Geraldine Ferraro, you hear that sexism is at work here.

And when word leaked that Obama was going to Iowa, back to where the race began, and that he was preparing to claim victory, the Clinton people responded quickly and sharply, calling it a "slap in the face."

You don't have to think hard to get the symbolism here. You don't have to be told who's being slapped by whom. You don't have to guess, either, how quickly Obama backed down.

The race may be about the math. And according to those who are counting, Obama has now won the majority of pledged delegates. He's also leading in superdelegates. And he's leading in the polls. He's this close - however you define this - to winning the Democratic nomination.

But this isn't only about math, unless you want to talk about division.

And so when Obama went to Iowa Tuesday night, he said victory was "within reach." And that's as far as he was willing to take it.

He didn't come to bury Clinton but to, yes, praise her.

And so we hear: "We have had our disagreements during this campaign, but we all admire her courage, her commitment and her perseverance. No matter how this primary ends, Senator Clinton has shattered myths and broken barriers and changed the America in which my daughters and yours will come of age. And for that we are grateful to her."

It was a night for reconciliation anyway. Obama and Clinton both began their speeches with words of affection for Ted Kennedy on the day we learned of his malignant brain tumor.

Clinton called him her inspiration. Kennedy had, of course, endorsed Obama, who called him a dear friend. And as Kennedy would surely hope, Obama then turned his attention to John McCain.

The race, it seemed, was finally under way.

Unless, that is, you were watching Clinton's speech, which came live from Louisville, Ky., or maybe, I'm thinking, from a parallel universe, or at least a parallel race track.

How can the race be over, Clinton keeps saying, when she's still running so hard?

The strange thing is, everyone is willing to go along with her, as if she still had time to catch up. At this point, who wants to argue?

I mean, if she wants to keep the long march going, what's another two weeks to the rest of us?

In her speech, she explained to the crowd how, of course, she would support the Democratic nominee in November, "whoever she may be."

I guess we're supposed to get the joke - to know that she knows that we know that she knows it's over.

As soon as she says it is.

littwinm@RockyMountainNews.com

• May 21, 2008

  7:53 a.m.

  Suggest removal

  SASQUATCH writes:

  Funny how liberals can define success; its like dumbing down an educational system and claiming that a B (formerly a C-) is a great achievement. Here, Littwin goes even further. He tries to define losing--coming in last--as a "win." Last place is a win only in liberal-land; no place else. Even Bill Clinton couldn't do that.

• May 21, 2008

  10:28 a.m.

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  Nico writes:

  Sounds like more of what the Clintons are known for. Distorting truth so far that it not recognizable. Remember, " Well, it depends what you mean by 'sexual relations'. " There are a lot of people in this great country that understand right from wrong. The Clinton's are going down in history as the people who want to re-define right from wrong so as to get away with anything, no matter how clear-cut wrong it is. Our Creator is ashamed of them.

• May 21, 2008

  10:50 a.m.

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  SASQUATCH writes:

  No suprises from the libdem philosophy that punishes success and rewards failure. Liberal failures and last place finishers are the real winners because they really didn't fail--they were VICTIMS.

• May 21, 2008

  12:21 p.m.

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  samsmargolis writes:

  If Clinton supporters are "rabid Clintonistas," then Obama supporters must be Obamahadists; or, maybe they are Husseinealots; or, maybe they are Barackabots. Oh, that whacky Mike, such a clever writer with the clever labels.

  "you hear that sexism is at work here..." Here's a truism that you'll never be man enough to admit, Littwin: it's harder for a woman to be elected to the office of President than a man of any race. Yet, you'll trumpet the whole race issue throughout the entirety of this campaign in your columns to stir up white guilt or to deflect attention away from Obama's obvious deficits, past and current affiliations, his wife's idiotic blatherings...or whatever it takes to see this man gets elected. What are you going to write about when Hillary is no longer an issue, Mike? Obama's voting record? Good luck.

• May 21, 2008

  4 p.m.

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  BJG writes:

  Mikey, Mikey, Mikey....
  Had Hillary been the leader and showed up in New Hampshire, you Obama lovers would have cried and beat your heads against a stone wall, because Hillary was dissin' your man, BUT, let the "man" do it and he's just claiming what's his. Maybe you should change your name to Mikey Misogynous Littwin.

• May 22, 2008

  10:31 a.m.

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  BJG writes:

  Mikey:
  So your lover boy is starting to select his VP!!!!! For you it's time to write another trashy article about Clinton, come on, she must be doing something you think is pushy and obnoxious, not like the man here who's picking his running mate BEFORE he even get's the nod. Come on Mikey, Clinton must have done something wrong today, maybe she wore a blue suit on Thursday.