Hillary Clinton throws good money after bad

Following the results in North Carolina (a heavy loss) and Indiana (a narrow victory) Hillary Clinton has been forced to pump a further $6.4m into campaigning for the Democratic nomination.  This is in addition to the $5m of her own money that she loaned to the campaign in February.  Even the most optimistic Democrat must realise that, unless she has the recovery powers of Lazarus, her campaign is finished.  The question I would be asking if I was a voter is this: 

How can you trust her to run the country’s finances if she’s so wasteful and lacking in judgement with her own cash? 

She needs 171 of the remaining 217 delegates to vote her way- which would be a huge swing away from what we’ve seen so far across the country- to become the Democratic nominee.  Most political commentators consider that the Clinton campaign is doomed.  Most political backers are now withdrawing their financial support from her campaign.  Highly-respected former Democratic campaigner George McGovern has switched alleigence and called for her to resign gracefully form the race.  But to the people around her it’s the elephant in the room that no-one talks about.  One wonders how they’ve responded to Tuesday’s results in front of her.  Perhaps they’ve been playing up the chances of the electorate performing a spectacular u-turn simply to keep themselves in a job.  What other credible explanation is there?  Lord only knows how an experienced and talented politician like her husband can stand by and watch her throw away over three million quid more on such folly.  It appears that she’s so consumed with her desire to take office that she has given up caring about how it will affect the party or the eventual nominee’s chances of success (as I have lamented previously: http://theraffishdandy.wordpress.com/2008/04/23/doesnt-the-us-presidential-election-race-go-on-and-on/).  As with Gordon Brown here in the UK, she’s damaged goods now and that will see the benefit-of-the-doubt supporters she has jumping ship to be on the winning team.  It’s simply the way that voters act.

The other point of interest that this news story raises is “can the Presidency be bought?”.  No-one pretends that you can win the election without substantial financial backing- which in itself raises tremendous questions about conflicts of interest, integrity and favours for favours- but can you simply spend so much that you blow the other candidates out of the water?  I’d like to think not, and as I’ve said above I think that this tactic in this instance will fail miserably.  But if Clinton does pull off the most spectacular electoral phoenix-from-the-flames win in my lifetime, then I guess that it will show that you can.

But I’m not holding my breath.

~ by theraffishdandy on 7 May, 2008.