Obama in the Clinton Trap

Barack Obama defeated Hillary Clinton in a grueling Primary race – and still can’t get rid of her. Now he has to integrate her into his team in order to gain her supporters for himself. At the same time, he has to free himself from her. Washington speculates about a solution to the dilemma.

It is over. She knows it. She has known it for a long time. Actually, Hillary Rodham Clinton should make her retreat. And even if nobody expected her to defend her defeat after the last primary elections in Montana and South Dakota, they expected at least a gesture, a symbol, a call for unity. And what did she say? “I will not make a decision tonight. I want the 18 million people who voted for me to be respected.” It appeared as though she did not really want to be responsible for the entire force of that one word: “Defeat”. Loss. Finished. Over. The end, after the longest Primary race of all time.

Apparently she would really like to compel Barack Obama to offer her the Vice-Presidency – but she still wants to call the shots. She already let it be known over the course of Election Day that she could see herself as Vice-President. Correspondingly, she let her aides play the song: “Simply the best.” “Write to me”, she even called to her supporters, “I want to hear your opinions.” That was no farewell speech – it was the speech of a held-back winner.

It even made the former Clinton strategist, David Gergen, shudder: “That was pretty spiteful. A missed chance.” And the Clinton biographer, Carl Bernstein, knew: “Initially, she never even considered the thought of giving up. “The word “defeat” was never a in the Clintons dictionary.

Obama delivered a eulogy for Clinton

But it is still over. He won – and it is already a historical victory. Barack Obama is the Presidential candidate for the Democratic Party. He has the majority of the delegates behind him. Barack Hussein Obama, the newcomer, is now the first black Presidential candidate in the history of America. And of course it was not by coincidence that he chose to hold his victory speech in the Xcel Energy Centre in St. Paul, Minnesota, which was packed full of more than 30,000 fans. It was because that is exactly where the Republican John McCain will be elected as a Presidential candidate in September. Just like it was also no coincidence that on this carefully orchestrated June 3rd, new Super-Delegates were declaring their support for Barack Obama almost hourly, Jimmy Carter included. By the evening it was a dozen – and they helped Obama over the delegate hurdle.

And he wore, a total patriot, the sticker with the American flag on his lapel and said “God bless America.” Then Barack Obama dutifully thanked his wife and his grandmother, who he claims to owe everything to.

And before he opened the national election with a mighty offense on John McCain at the end of the day, then full of rousing energy and a with stern face, Barack Obama first held a eulogy for Hillary Clinton – elegant, generous, almost hymnal, as though he wanted to invite her to the Vice-Presidency right there. “Senator Clinton wrote history in this electoral campaign. And not just because she is a woman. She is a true leader. I congratulate her on this election campaign. And she will be of central importance for our victory in November. I am the better candidate because I had the honour to compete against her.”

What terms is she stipulating now?

It was his appeal for unity, for her support. After all, he needs the 18 million supporters who voted for Hillary Clinton in the Primary elections. He needs Hillary Clinton. He even left a message on her answering machine late in the evening. He is apparently ready to meet. He had already previously offered her talks, in a location and time of her choice, in order to discuss conjoint “post-Primary-election-activities”. Maybe that also includes potential assistance with the settlement of her approx. $20 million dollar electoral campaign debts.

It was two speeches, two worlds. And now they have to come together. Now it is just a question of: What terms is she stipulating before her genuflection? For herself, for her angry husband Bill. Right up to the end, he had moaned with a red face about the media and their sexism, which he claims had never given his wife a real chance. And he had gotten especially agitated over a very angry report in the glamour magazine Vanity Fair, in which there is talk of his lack of judgement, strange friends and other women. The author is “scandalous” (who is married to Clintons former press speaker, Dee Dee Myers) complained Clinton, “dishonest and slimy”. In the end, it was as if he was downright scared that it could be over. And Hillary would not be moving in to the White House.

She wants to co-decide

She fought, tried with almost all means – the Mother Theresa of the suffering middle class, the feminist, Bill’s wife. She branded populist slogans and did not shy away from playing with racial prejudices. And she fought – she won the last 8 out of 15 Primary elections. She gained with the poorer, white voters in important “swing-states”, the hard-fought federal states. And she received – at least according to her more than controversial censuses – overall more votes, if not more delegates too. She unequivocally wants make it clear to the man who messed up her strongly believed in victory that: She can co-decide, who the next President of the United States will be.

In the days to come, she wants to make a decision, said Hillary Clinton.

And it is about time since it is imperative that Barack Obama now shows his national profile as a statesman, as the potential President for all Americans. Because although Bush had to face up to the signs of a Democratic victory after seven years, war hero John McCain is currently neck-in-neck with Barack Obama (or Hillary Clinton). Plus John McCain can challenge him on important subjects: climate change, his fight against Bush’s torture policy, even Iraq – seeing as McCain wants to pull out the majority of US troops from there by 2013. And in fact victoriously, as he promises: “I will never surrender myself in Iraq”, says McCain, whenever he can, a total patriot.

Yesterday marked the beginning of the national election campaign and Barack Obama has a long way ahead of him. He now has to develop his own profile, solicit his standpoints.

It is already complicated for him: Barack Obama needs Hillary Clinton – but he also has to free himself from her. There is already speculation about a golden compromise: He would offer her the Vice-Presidency – if he can be sure that she will turn it down.