Winning Again, Clinton Weighs Her Options
By ADAM NAGOURNEY
Published: June 2, 2008
WASHINGTON — Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton won another overwhelming victory over Senator Barack Obama on Sunday — this time in Puerto Rico — even as many Democrats, including some of her supporters, suggested it would be best if she dropped her threat to battle on past the end of the primary voting on Tuesday.
“There’s nobody taking Hillary’s side but Hillary people,” said Donald Fowler of South Carolina, a former national party chairman and one of Mrs. Clinton’s most prominent supporters, referring to her campaign’s suggestions that she might seek to challenge the way the party resolved the fight this weekend over seating the Michigan and Florida delegations. “It’s too bad. She deserves better than this.” In a telephone interview Sunday from San Juan, P.R., Mrs. Clinton still raised the possibility that she would challenge the party’s decision on seating those delegates. “Well, we are going to look at that and make a determination at some point,” she said. “But I haven’t made any decision at this time.”...
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Mrs. Clinton won by 2 to 1 in Puerto Rico, where she seemed to revel in a weekend of campaigning even as her surrogates fought in Washington to keep her campaign alive. The victory — coming among Hispanic voters, who are a key constituency in the fall election — underscored a constant source of frustration among Mrs. Clinton and her supporters: that her strong finish over the past months, with big victories among blue-collar voters, have shown no signs of pushing uncommitted superdelegates into her camp. “Most Clinton supporters are filled with bewilderment that this is happening,” said Gov. Edward G. Rendell of Pennsylvania. “We are willing to go on, and we understand the inevitability of this, but we are filled with disappointment and amazement: Why haven’t these results caused the superdelegates to come around?”
Mrs. Clinton, in the interview, in a new television advertisement and in her victory speech in San Juan, laid out why superdelegates should rally around her. She argued that by the time the final vote is counted, she will have more popular votes than Mr. Obama, an assertion that has been disputed....
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Mrs. Clinton stopped short of going as far as one of her chief lieutenants, Harold Ickes, did on Saturday night when he threatened to appeal the party’s decision over the seating of the Florida and Michigan delegates to the party’s credentials committee, which will meet before the convention in August....(I)n a sign of the difficulties she would face if she chooses to appeal, some of her strongest supporters said in interviews that they thought it would be a mistake to keep the fight going, noting, for example, that the battle was really over the four delegates her campaign argued were improperly taken from her in Michigan....And there were signs that continuing the fight, should Mr. Obama collect enough superdelegates to declare victory this week, could alienate many Democratic leaders who have stepped back as the fight went on....
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...Mr. Obama’s advisers — as well as Mrs. Clinton’s — still think it is likely that he will pass the threshold and be able to claim the nomination this week. Mrs. Clinton demurred when asked what she would do if that happened. “I just don’t think about it,” she said. “I’m just committed to making my case.” “I’ve been closing very strongly since Feb. 20,” she said, referring to the day after Mr. Obama won Hawaii and Wisconsin. “I have won more votes and won more states than Senator Obama. All the independent analyses break in my direction. A lot of the key states that we have to win, I win those states.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/02/us/politics/02dems.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&ref=todayspaper&pagewanted=all
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