Pat Dollard | Young Americans

Politico:

Hillary Clinton has been one defeat away from pulling out of the race for the Democratic nomination since January 3, when she lost the Iowa caucuses and barreled into New Hampshire with more panic than plan.

Since then she and her staff have defined victory down: Winning, for Clinton, has been surviving. It was a concession Clinton made clear in the campaign’s final glitzy gala fundraiser in April, whose theme was the title of Elton John’s last song: “I’m Still Standing.”

Clinton’s sense that she’s won a kind of victory doesn’t have much bearing on the reality of the nomination contest: Although Clinton aides Tuesday denied an Associated Press report that she would concede Tuesday night, she faces almost certain defeat, likely to be confirmed mathematically this week when Obama secures an absolute majority of delegates to the Democratic National Convention.

But inside Clinton’s camp, the political reality is competing with the psychological fact of Clinton’s strong run, in which she’s been met by cheering crowds and shepherded by faithful staff long after the press stopped taking her bid seriously.

The result has been a strange disconnect between Hillaryland and the rest of the political universe, and chaotic mixed messages from Hillaryland, as some staffers and supporters quietly acknowledge defeat while the candidate herself – so far – is still straining to project strength.

Clinton is still standing—albeit with a stoop and worse for the wear from a long campaign. After a bad January and what was, in retrospect, a fatal February, she solidly beat Senator Barack Obama at the polls and in the spin wars through the months of March, April, and May.

There are voices in her circle – including, by some insiders’ accounts – her husband, counseling her to fight on, and hoping for some new revelation that will unexpectedly damage Obama.

And Clinton’s apparent sense that her survival is itself a kind of victory has made the end harder for her and her tight inner circle to contemplate, aides and supporters said Monday. Though Senator Barack Obama appears likely to announce an absolute majority of superdelegates this week, and even as many of her staff and supporters quietly acknowledged that the end had come, Clinton and some around her appeared tempted to press on: If the drubbing she took in February couldn’t drive her from the race, why should she leave at the end of a winning streak?

Longtime Clinton consigliere Harold Ickes urged her donors to remain steadfast on an afternoon conference call, a person on the call said.

A Clinton fundraising aide, Rafi Jafri, circulated a draft of a letter for signature by members of her Illinois finance committee, with a stark message of no surrender:

“Senator Clinton is ahead in the popular vote, and neither candidate can secure the nomination with pledged delegates alone. The automatic delegates can change their mind up until their vote at the convention, and that is why this nominating process must be resolved in August, and no earlier,” the draft letter said.

And Clinton herself crystallized a case for victory, one that superdelegates are manifestly unwilling to hear.

“After South Dakota and Montana vote I will lead in the popular vote and Senator Obama will lead in the delegate count,” Clinton said in Yankton, SD Monday afternoon. “The voters will have voted and so the decision will fall to the delegates empowered to vote at the Democratic Convention. I will be spending the coming days making my case to those delegates.”

The last believers in the mythology of Clintonian invincibility appear to be the Clintons themselves—above all the former president, the protagonist of many comebacks who sees glimmerings of one more.

“You can’t overstate the extent to which he’s an advisor of war in there,” said a prominent supporter close to the campaign. “He’s just waiting for the comeback to happen, and he’s giving her advice through the lens of his own comebacks.”

The Clintons and senior advisors have been left waiting for a political miracle: “What story about him will break, what video tape will come out, or what’s going to happen.”

The video tape was a reference to a rumor, reproduced online and on cable television, and much discussed within Clinton’s circle — though without a shred of credible sourcing — that Republicans have a damaging video of Obama’s wife, Michelle.

But even as some voices in Clinton’s circle counsel fighting on, the campaign has ceased projecting anything approaching a clear message. Ickes, who left donors on one conference call bracing for a long fight, told superdelegate supporters on another Monday call that the shape of the race would likely be clear “by the end of the week,” a superdelegate on the call said.

“I don’t think it’s based on any master plan, absent some real guidance from Hillary,” the superdelegate said.

Elsewhere, the campaign showed signs of fraying. Field staffers Sunday received notice that they should either attend Clinton’s election night event in New York go home and wait for further instructions, which many doubted would ever come. Staffer operated openly on the assumption that the race will end this week. Donors fielded calls from Obama fundraisers eager to tap into a new source of money.

And cracks were showing in the campaign’s message machine. Former Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack, a stalwart supporter, said he thinks the race is essentially over.

After Ickes Sunday combatively denounced a Democratic National Committee decision to deprive Clinton of four delegates he thought she’d won in Michigana prominent Clinton fundraiser and superdelegate, Robert Zimmerman, criticized Ickes publicly on Lou Dobbs Tonight.

Ickes did “a disservice to the campaign” by raising the prospect of an extended procedural battle, Zimmerman said.

Zimmerman linked Clinton’s remaining in the race to her last five months of battling.

“The way she resurrected her campaign is a tremendous tribute to her,” he said. “She has not only beat the odds – she has really forged a new coalition and stayed viable.”

Clinton aides said the expected Clinton deliver what one described as a “valedictory” speech Tuesday night, but to remain in the contest until later in the week. Her final scheduled event is at the conference of the pro-Israel group AIPAC Wednesday morning, and many aides expected the balance of the week to be devoted to the choreography of her departure.

Still, the candidate herself does not, aides said, appear quite ready to quit.

“Why would anyone walk off the field in the bottom of the ninth before the game is over?” Zimmerman said.