Finally, after months of being mathematically eliminated from the Democratic nomination for president, after race-baiting, fictional sniper fire, hard-working white people, angry white women, big wins in states that couldn't get her closer to the nomination, dubious Osama bin Laden references, the red phone ad, even more dubious assassination references, the Michigan and Florida compromises, Harriet Christian, Barack reaching the magic number plus more than 100 and 24 hours after the worst ... non-concession ... speech ... ever ... Hillary Clinton will finally suspend her wheels-off-the-tracks campaign, mercifully, on Friday. The New York Times reports tonight:
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton will endorse Senator Barack Obama on Friday, bringing a close to her 17-month campaign for the White House, aides said. Her decision came after Democrats urged her on Wednesday to leave the race and allow the party to coalesce around Mr. Obama.
Mrs. Clinton’s aides said she would “express her support for Senator Obama and party unity” at an event in Washington that day. One adviser said that Mrs. Clinton would concede defeat, congratulate Mr. Obama and proclaim him the party’s nominee, while pledging to do what was needed to assure his victory.
Her decision came after a day of conversations with supporters on Capitol Hill about her future now that Mr. Obama had clinched the nomination. Mrs. Clinton had, in a speech after Tuesday night’s primaries, suggested that she wanted to wait before deciding about her future, but in conversations throughout the day on Wednesday, her aides said, she was urged to step aside.
“We pledged to support her to the end,” said Representative Charles B. Rangel, a New York Democrat who has been a patron of Mrs. Clinton since she first ran for the Senate. “Our problem is not being able to determine when the hell the end is.” ...
Rep. Rangel was apparently one of the prime movers in pushing Mrs. Clinton out of the race. He was visibly angry in an interview with NBC News today, and according to Andrea Mitchell, he told Hillary point blank, along with 23 fellow members of Congress, that she had erred last night in not acknowledging that Barack had reached the number of delegates needed to seal the nomination. Mitchell reported that members were approaching Obama repeatedly on Capitol Hill today and telling him they wanted to move over to him (as many undecided supers are rushing to do before the train is so far out of the station it becomes a puff of smoke,) but Hillary wouldn't release them to switch their endorsement. And Howard Fineman reported that there was a subsequent conference call arranged, no less, by senior Clinton advisers, on which eight senior Senators, presumably including Harry Reid, Chuck Schumer, Barbara McCulsky and Diane Feinstein, told Hillary it was time to go.
A bit more from the Times:
The desire of the party for Mrs. Clinton to leave the race was signaled — if politely as four top Democratic leaders issued a statement on Wednesday morning asking all uncommitted delegates to make their decisions by Friday. The statement from the party officials — Howard Dean, the Democratic chairman; Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker; Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, and Gov. Joe Manchin of West Virginia — stopped short of endorsing Mr. Obama, but aides said they would likely move in that direction if Mrs. Clinton lingered in the race.
“The voters have spoken,” they said in their joint statement released before 7 a.m., purposefully timed to set the tone for the day after the election. “Democrats must now turn our full attention to the general election.”
Representative Rahm Emanuel, the Illinois Democrat with close ties to Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton who had kept studiously neutral throughout the presidential contest, said in an interview that he was “coming out from my desk” to endorse Mr. Obama. “The fact is that he is the nominee,” Mr. Emanuel said
He seemed quizzical at the slowness of Mrs. Clinton’s decision not to acknowledge this. “You don’t answer about whether you want to be about vice president unless there’s no doubt in your mind that he is the nominee,” he said, referring to Mrs. Clinton’s initial reluctance to congratulate Mr. Obama, noting that she told supporters she would be open to be vice president, if Mr. Obama wanted her.
Mrs. Clinton’s initial ambivalence about her future in her speech on Tuesday night stirred concern among some of her top supporters.
“By the time she got on that podium last night, she knew it was over and that she had lost,” Hillary Rosen, one of Mrs. Clinton’s most prominent women supporters, wrote on the Huffington Post Web site. “I am sure I was not alone in privately urging the campaign over the last two weeks to use the moment to take her due, pass the torch and cement her grace.”
Now, Hillary will get a second shot at that moment. Unfortunately, it will have been forced upon her.
UPDATE: Keith Olbermann just reported that Hillary will make some sort of concession-like announcement to her senior staff at her home in D.C. on Friday, followed by a bigger public event on Saturday.
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%>
Tell a friend
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'sets variables
dim email, sendmail
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'put the webmaster address here
sendmail.From = "webmaster@aspbasics.com"
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sendmail.To = email
'Enter the subject of your mail here
sendmail.Subject = "Check out this website"
'send a specific page or send a site url
dim url
'url = Request.ServerVariables("HTTP_REFERER")
url = "http://www.aspbasics.net"
'This is the content of the message.
sendmail.Body = "Site recommendation from a friend!" & _
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vbCrlf & url & vbCrlf
'this sets mail priority.... 0=low 1=normal 2=high
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sendmail.Send 'Send the email!
response.redirect Request.ServerVariables("HTTP_REFERER")
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End if
%>
"[T]he practice of arbitrary imprisonments, have been, in all ages, the favorite and most formidable instruments of tyranny.' Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 84, August, 1788
