Hillary Clinton, for the second day in a row, prompts us to think long and hard about Reverend Wright. In a Time interview she says:
Well that’s really up to the press and the public to determine, but I was asked specifically today what I would do if I had been in a similar situation and it was obviously a personal opinion of mine and I said, you know, I would have left because that would not have been something I was comfortable with. But it’s very personal and I think people are kind of thinking about it and are trying to determine what they believe about it.
Given Clinton’s polling fetish, you can bet that she’s sees good reason to keep nudging the story along, despite the conclusion from liberal pundits that everything is fine, perfectly fine, for their favorite son.
And there’s no sign that Clinton sees the handwriting on the wall on the delegate front. She reminds us:
We’re both going to be short, and when you think about the many millions of people who have already voted, we are separated by a relatively small percentage of votes. We’re separated by, you know, a little more than a hundred delegates. I’ve won states that Democrats need to win in the general election in order to win the White House and obviously the strategy on the other side is to try to shut this race down, but I don’t think voters want that.
What’s her ace in the hole? Why, Michigan and Florida of course. If you thought Bush v. Gore became a rallying cry for “voter disenfranchisement,” wait until the street rallies over “delegate stripping” get under way. Clinton declares:
And there’s additional problems of Florida and Michigan, because I still don’t see how the Democrats don’t figure out a way to make sure their votes are counted. And I don’t understand what Senator Obama was afraid of when I agreed and the DNC signed off on a re-vote in Michigan and he said no. So we’re just going to keep this process going through these next contests.
So the Clinton game plan is clear: bank on Wright being a game changer, don’t for a moment show any inclination to pack it in and, if all else fails, raise one heck of a fuss over the “lost” delegates. This thing isn’t close to being over.