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Clinton' chief strategist, Mark Penn, is now wandering around town telling reporters that Obama "can't win the general election." There are two ways to look at this comment. One is that it's a prediction based off a big bag o' nothing. The other is that it's a promise. And increasingly, that looks to be the correct assumption. Jon Chait lays it out:
[Clinton] needs to convince the remaining uncommitted superdelegates to split for her by about a 2-to-1 margin. The only way she can get a split like that is if she can persuasively argue that Obama is unelectable. And the only way she can do that is to make him unelectable. Some people have treated this as an unfortunate byproduct of Clinton's decision to continue her campaign. It's actually a central element of the strategy. Penn is already saying he's unelectable. It's not true, but by the time the convention rolls around, it may well be.Clinton has no road to the nomination save for the literal destruction of Obama's candidacy. There's no affirmative argument for her campaign that's strong enough to overwhelm his lead in pledged delegates. Rather, she's basically got to cripple him so badly that he can't make it over the finish line. Mark Penn not only has to say that Obama is unelectable, he has to believe he can make it true. And what a shame. What a shame to see Hillary Clinton reduced to this, left insulting the intelligence of the voters and entirely reliant on the politics of personal destruction for her success. And the only possible reward here is a nomination that, if she captures it through this strategy, will probably be worthless anyway.
