Senator Hillary Clinton has flatly denied she ever told Gov. Bill Richardson that her chief rival from the Democratic nomination Senator Barack Obama could not win the presidency:
ABC News Eloise Harper Reports: Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., denies she told Governor Bill Richardson, D-N.M., that her Democratic nomination rival, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., “cannot win” a general election against presumptive Republican nominee, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.
“That’s a no,” Clinton, D-N.Y., told reporters at the end of a press conference in Burbank, California, when asked if made the comment to Richardson.
“We have been going back and forth in this campaign of who said what to whom and let me say this, that I don’t talk about private conversations but I have consistently made the case that I can win,” she said.
ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos reported on Wednesday’s World News that sources with direct knowledge of the conversation between Sen. Clinton and Richardson, prior to the Governor’s endorsement of Obama say she told him flatly, “He cannot win, Bill. He cannot win.”
There are several ways to look at this:
(1) CLINTON IS TELLING THE TRUTH: This would mean Stephanopoulos either had a political ax to grind or was hoodwinked by a source.
(2) SHE’S DOING DAMAGE CONTROL SINCE THIS DOES NOT SEEM TO BE PLAYING WELL WITH SUPER DELEGATES: Put this in the political context of the string of Superdelegate endorsements Obama is getting, reports of irked Superdelegates, the report of a red-faced Bill Clinton going on a tirade when Richardson’s name came up. Too much ink and air time is being devoted now to Clinton strategy and tactics — versus her POLICIES.
Choose the one according to your own analysis or political biases.
Here’s my take:
It’s probable that it WAS said to Richardson and, according to Stephanopoulos and other reports, this is precisely the argument being made by the Clintons to delegates: that Obama cannot win. This is not a statement that really was all that new. What was new was that it quoted Clinton as saying it to Richardson and got great Internet news play (with a screeching headline on the Drudge report).
Most reports say the Clintons are talking about how Obama has fared in some big states and the way Republicans could use things such as his middle name and the controversy over his pastor’s hate-fest sermon against him. Meanwhile, at least a few talk radio show hosts have said the subtext of the Clintons’ “can’t win” argument is that Obama can’t win because he’s a “black candidate.”
There are just too many other stories out there about this argument being used by the Clintons to dismiss it as all a case of Stephanopoulos doing sloppy reporting or being mislead by a news source. Stephanopoulos is no dummy and is well-connected.
In fact, if you want to speculate, it seems possible that the source was a disgusted Bill Richardson who has found himself insulted and under attack by James Carville and by Bill Clinton.
The bottom line: stories like this continue to distract voters from Hillary Clinton’s policies and qualities that she wants to stress so she can get votes. The longer the literal “he said…she said” goes on and on and on, the more it keeps Clinton mired where she is.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.