With Harold Ickes of Hillary Clinton’s campaign getting all in red and uppercase letters at TIME:
AIDES DENY AP REPORT ON END OF CLINTON CAMPAIGN
Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008Justin Sullivan/Getty
CLINTON CAMPAIGN CHAIR MCAULIFFE CALLS CABLE NETWORKS TO SHOOT DOWN WIRE REPORT THAT CLINTON PLANNED TO ALL BUT CONCEDE IN TUESDAY NIGHT’S SPEECH
Top adviser Ickes also tells MSNBC the report is inaccurate.
No doubt – more to come. So – who do you believe? Why or why not? The AP? TIME magazine? Oy.
Likewise, Ben Smith at Politico has this:
Clinton aide Howard Wolfson is denying the Associated Press report that she will concede tonight and begin shutting down her campaign.
The key point, my colleague Mike Allen points out, may be in the details here: Clinton said yesterday that Obama would win the delegate majority. But Clinton said she’d won the popular vote, and would campaign on making that case.
More to come.
UPDATE: Here’s the campaign statement: “The AP story is incorrect. Senator Clinton will not concede the nomination this evening.”
UPDATE 2: And, from Chris Cillizza at WaPo’s The Fix:
A senior Clinton adviser told The Fix moments ago that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) will “recognize the reality of where we are” during her remarks tonight in New York City.
The adviser warned that the language of Clinton’s speech was not yet set and offered no comment about reports that the New York senator is planning to admit tonight that Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) has the 2,118 delegates necessary to formally clinch the party’s nomination. Other high-ranking Clinton aides professed no knowledge that a decision had been made to acknowledge Obama as the nominee tonight.
The Clinton campaign, in fact, released a statement insisting that the Associated Press story that fueled this maelstrom was not correct; “Senator Clinton will not concede the nomination this evening,” the statement asserted.
Language is important here. An acknowledgment of Obama securing the delegates he needs to formally become the party’s nominee is NOT the same thing as a concession by Clinton.
Cillizza notes the delegate total versus the popular vote total. The problem still being, no matter which candidate you support, the winner could have been the other one. It’s that close, which makes these kinds of arguments capable of being flip-flopped endlessly. And why so many want Clinton to actually concede and why she is so resistant to do so.
Hattip to Andy Carvin and his tweets.