Hillaryzilla

Maggie called me early this morning with the news. We gained a dozen or so delegates by winning Texas, Ohio, and Rhode Island but spent $25-million to do it. She also said we lost about a dozen SuperDelegates who switched over to Barack Obama.

Only Mitt Romney spent more of his own money to buy delegates.

This whole primary campaign against Barack has turned out to be something of a pickle for the Democratic Party. It may very well be that both Barack and I head in to the convention this summer with about the same number of pledged delegates but not enough for either one of us to claim the nomination.

Some SuperDelegates have pledged for me, others for Barack, which leaves a few hundred more SuperDelegates that are unpledged, uncounted, and who won’t answer the phone. I know why.

Every day the ante goes up. They’ll want the sun and the moon and the stars for their votes. On a whole, delegates in the Democratic primary are cheap at about $35,000 each. Total campaign money spent divided by the total number of delegates.

The last 300 are likely to be much more expensive.

Ohio is not a pretty place this time of year. It’s almost spring and it still looks like winter here. Everything is gray and dreary and everyone is gray, dreary, and overweight. Hasn’t Ohio ever heard of Weight Watchers or Jenny Craig?

Today I was asked a question at a rally by one of my local campaign supporters. She told me her name is Virginia, a slightly overweight middle-aged woman with too much makeup and not enough sun, and she asked, “Mrs Clinton, if you lose Ohio and Texas, will you concede defeat to Senator Obama?”

Despite the years of being in the public limelight, people just don’t know the real Hillary Rodham Clinton. Quit? It’s not what we do. Bill never quits. I never quit.

So, yes Virginia, there is life after Tuesday.

More than just pressing on, there’s not only life, but hope. Even if Senator Obama gets a slim victory in each state, he won’t get all the delegates. If we split the states, we split the delegates. I will press on. I have to. Otherwise they might ask me back to host Saturday Night Live.

To date we’ve tried every tactic known to modern politics to cut into Barack Obama’s allure with the voters. Nothing has worked. Nothing.

The most interesting piece of advice I’ve read anywhere came from Daniel Finkelstein of The London Times. He says I should shut up. That’s it. Just plain old shut up. Well, not shut up as in stop talking, but shut up as in don’t rag on Barack Obama all the time.

I’ll admit, it’s an intriguing  suggestion, and by using it I would be completely out of character. In the absence of any other tactic that’s worked, trying the one tactic that hasn’t been tried may be the only option left.

The gist of this strange tactic is this: Barack Obama is a rock star. People don’t care about his politics or his record or his experience or his lack thereof, they just want to see him sneeze, see him move, see if he’s real, regardless of how shallow he really is. Like a rock star, people want Obama to sing to them through his speeches and public appearances.

So, the only way to combat such an overwhelmingly spiritual and emotional attraction is for me to stop all negative campaigning and focus on my message. I’m experienced. I’m strong. I’m tested. I wouldn’t even have to say he’s not experienced, or strong, or tested, just so long as I keep repeating that I am. Somehow or another, Obama’s drug-induced attraction will wear off and voters will remember who’s really experienced, strong, and tested.

Bill and Icky keep telling me to attack Obama at every chance, but that hasn’t worked so far. Then again, this untried tactic of playing nice-nice to Obama might be part of a larger British strategy to get Obama elected instead of me. After all, they’re still upset at Bill because he gave a case of dental floss to Margaret Thatcher as state gift.

I believe in miracles. I believe in divine intervention. I believe that Bill Clinton’s race card idea didn’t work out. I should never have let him talk me into it.

It’s time for Plan B.

The only problem right now is that nobody is sure what Plan B should be. Maggie just doesn’t have a clue about political strategy. Harold and Terry are fresh out of ideas, and Howard’s already on record saying we won’t poach Obama’s so-called pledged delegates, so that’s out. For now.

Obama can thank his new buddy, Ted Kennedy, for the teflon delegate mess. He wrote the rules. Obama may have won plenty of delegates in all those caucus states but they’re not obligated to stick to him. Poaching a few here and there could be a last ditch effort, but it’s not looking too likely that we’ll take that route. For now.

That leaves SuperDelegates and a pickle to bake. SuperDelegates are Democratic Party insiders, former office holders, and party officials. They’re not pledged to any candidate and in a primary race this close will become the deciding factor if neither of us get over 50-percent of the pledged delegates.

In other words, party insiders can sway a close election one way or the other just because they want to.

The pickle baking analogy was Patti’s parting comment, “Hillary,” she said, “you and Bill are baking pickles again.” No matter how you bake it, a pickle still comes out as a pickle and that’s what we’ve got right now– a pickle. If Obama wins the total popular vote from all the primary elections and caucuses, but the SuperDelegates throw their votes to me, as I told them and expect them to, then voters will be upset.

For some reason, they still think their votes actually count in an election. How quaint.

Anyway, back to work on Plan B.

We have it on good authority that Barack Obama’s speeches are full of plagiarized phrases. The man is a word thief. He steals other people’s words and calls them his own.

We hired a couple of computer geeks to track Obama’s campaign speeches and run them through a database to compare with other speeches. The pattern is unmistakable. Obama’s speeches are plagiarized.

It’s a fact. Black men can’t write.

Obama says, “I have a dream.” Oh, really? Is it the dream of being able to write your own material, Barack? Or, is it a “dream” like that of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr? Or, is it the “dream” used by Massachusets Governor Deval Patrick in his campaign speeches?

The way I see this whole issue is crystal clear. Obama is not afraid to take what doesn’t belong to him. He’s used the phrase, “Fired up and ready to go in his campaign.” So have I, so it’s obvious to anyone who knows me that Obama stole the phrase from me.

I used the same line to Bill years ago when I threatened to leave him after the Monica Lewinsky affair. I said, “Bill, I’m fired up and ready to go.” Now Obama makes it a part of his own campaign. Truly, there is no honor among thieves.

For a long time this firewall business didn’t make any sense. For as long as I remember, a firewall is what firefighters dug in front of an approaching forrest fire. What’s the political significance?

Is Barack Obama considered an approaching fire? Are we fighting fire with fire? Is there some kind of new meaning to firewall that I don’t fully appreciatiate? It turns out that the Clinton Firewall is all of that and more.

The Texas and Ohio primary elections are turning out to be our firewall. If we win there, we can win in Pennsylvania a few weeks later, so digging a trench to fight Obama’s approaching firestorm might be sufficient to douse some water on his flames.

So to speak. Mixing metaphors is a trick I haven’t mastered yet. Anyway, we dig in and fight for Texas and Ohio and show everyone that Obama can’t win the big states that are crucial to a Democratic victory in November, ergo, vote for Hillary because she wins the big states.

Add Florida and Michigan delegates to the stack after a sweep in the bigger states, and Barack starts to look like the Skinny Little Kid Who Could– Almost.

Alright. I get it. You don’t have to tell me twice. I’m a member of the speed reader group now. Firewall. Barrier. Do or die. Last ditch effort to thwart a firestorm. My personal favorite is, ‘Roast his little black butt,” however, Bill says that’s playing the race card in a way it was intended to be played. Whatever.

I don’t know what it is about the caucus process but it’s not working for me. At least not in Nebraska, or Washington, or Main, or Louisiana.

Obama scored another round of delegates today in mostly caucus elections, fortunately not many delegates were at stake and the states are mostly unimportant.

Still, I’ll feel better when we get these caucus states out of the way and get back to real primary elections, especially in states where there are not so many black voters. And thank God for Super Delegates. Bill knows them all by name and phone number and what he did for them as President.

It’s funny, even Bill didn’t do well in caucus voting. Maybe it’s a Clinton thing. I can’t help but wonder why Obama gets more votes than me in caucus elections. He’s a great speaker on stage in front of a large crowd. In small groups he stammers and stutters and couldn’t complete a sentence if he was reading it off a card.

Bill says the caucus system is flawed, it’s undemocratic, and caters mostly to party activists; the noisy members who forget to vote. Next week is the Potomac primary. Maryland, Virginia, and DC are mostly black so they’ll go to Obama. But Wisconsin and Hawaii have their caucus votes, too, and hardly any blacks live there. We’ll see.

Damn those caucuses. Whose idea was that?

This has been brewing for awhile but it’s time. My campaign is struggling the past few months and it’s important to find out why, change it or fix it, move on. Leadership requires insight, the ability to make the tough decisions.

Tonight Bill was on the phone talking with Donald Trump. Trump calls whenever he gets a new dirty joke to tell. Bill is laughing so hard tears are coming down his cheeks, so I grab the phone and say, “Donald? Hillary. Listen, I need some advice about managing my campaign staff. Can we talk?”

My mistake. The man could talk the lips off Cher. He goes on an on about how I need campaign staffers with dedication, loyalty, experience, street smarts, and a good complexion. I’m like, “What’s a good complexion have to do with anything, Donald?”

He says, “Who on your staff of closest advisors has the worst complexion? Find that person and pull the trigger. You’re fired! That’s it. Everything gets better after that. Trust me.”

Who would have thought that a little Clearasil and some make up could save a career? Well, tomorrow I have to set up a meeting with Patti Doyle. Then another with Maggie Williams. I call it a Complexion Check. One is like strawberry ice cream. The other is like mocha latte.

Tonight’s Democratic presidential debate between Barack Obama and me was the best ever on national television. It was truly a jib-jab lovefest for change.

Argumentation and debate instructors will use a tape of the debate in their classrooms for decades.

The question that received the loudest applause was one everyone in my campaign has been talking about for a month. Is ‘Clinton-Obama’ the perfect ticket?

Yes, it is. How can John ‘Elmer Fudd’ McCain win against such a pairing? We’ll get all the black, or colored, or African-American, or whatever vote. for sure. Most women will vote for us, too. Plus, we get the youth vote; anyone 30 and under.

We’ll sweep the country. I’ll take the West Coast, Bill can handle the East Coast, and Barack gets the South. From time to time we’ll all roll through the Midwest on one of those barnstorming trains. McCain can have whatever else is left, and it won’t be much. Think Bob Dole in 1996. It was his turn to lose then, and it’s McCain’s turn to lose now.

The only problem I have with this so-called ‘Perfect Ticket’ is simple– Obama’s on it. Granted, we see eye-to-eye on most issues, and he wasn’t around the Senate when we voted on the war, so that’s not a blemish on his record. It’s just that the man loves the spotlight. It’s as if media attention gives him a tan, or something.

Bill has already warned me that if we put Obama on the ticket we can’t lose. We’re back in the White House, baby!! But that’s short term thinking. Longer term there are some issues.

My greatest fear is that Obama will end up thinking he’s some kind of co-President. We’ve already heard from some of our moles in his campaign that he wants Oprah Winfrey to be Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. Sure, I’ll go for that. Not.

In Obama’s bizarro world I suppose Hulk Hogan would get the Secretary of Defense job. John Edwards would get the nod for the Labor job. Obama would appoint Tom Hanks for Education and Arnold for Transportation. Ted Kennedy would be appointed as Secretary of Alcohol and Driver’s Education.

Late last night I got a call from Bill on my cell phone after I finished the day campaigning in Tennessee. The first thing he said was, “I told you so.” As usual, he was right again.

Barack Obama won big in South Carolina. It was a trouncing, a drubbing, a runaway victory. That’s what you heard on every cable news channel from 11 seconds after the polls closed.

Obama beat Clinton in South Carolina. Or, did he?

Bill explained the results this way. South Carolina’s Democrats are comprised of about 50-percent blacks. Most of that vote when to Barack Obama.

The rest of the vote would be split three ways, a little for Obama, a little more for John Edwards, and a little more for me. That looks like Obama literally trounced me and John. Or, did he?

In reality, Obama got 80-percent of the black vote, but only 25-percent of the white vote. 20-percent of the black vote was split between John and me, while 75-percent of the white vote was split between John and me.

In other words, it was a day of ebony vs. ivory, black vs. white. Obama scored a narrow victory, and just barely got by the white candidates with a little over half the vote, and that was in a state where half the voters are black. Or, African-American, or whatever.

What would have happened if the primary election had been held in, say, New York or California, instead of predominantly black South Carolina?

It’s math. Again, Obama would have received 80-percent of the black vote, which would be barely 10-percent of the total vote, and maybe 15-percent of the white vote, for a grand total of maybe 30-percent, in which case he loses.

In an election that is 10-percent pure ebony vs. 90-percent pure ivory, and my ivory is pure, then Obama loses. It’s ebony vs. ivory. There’s more ivory states than ebony states, so when we add it all up, ivory wins.

Now if I could just figure out what to do with John Edwards. He keeps losing, but he doesn’t quit. I think he’s looking for a job.