Clinton Running Hard as West Virginia Votes

[DeepModem Mom]

NYT: Political Memo
Clinton Running Hard as West Virginia Votes
By PATRICK HEALY
Published: May 13, 2008


(Stephen Crowley/NYT)
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton chatting on Monday with Evelyn Keener at Tudor’s Biscuit World in Charleston, W.Va.

Forget the calls for her to quit the presidential race: Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton is determined to rack up two big primary victories in the next eight days — in West Virginia and Kentucky — as she seeks to prove her continued political viability and claim bargaining chips that might help her exit the race on her terms, her advisers say.

It is a risky proposition. Mrs. Clinton is behind Senator Barack Obama in both the national popular vote and the delegate count, and she could appear to be a spoiler if she damages his candidacy in those two closely fought states, her advisers acknowledge. But she and her chief political counselor, her husband, see the two coming primaries as crucial to strengthening her standing and, if it comes to it, to allowing her to leave the race on a high note, the advisers say.

Sizable victories — the Clinton camp believes it could win West Virginia by 25 points or more — might put pressure on Mr. Obama to agree to her demands to seat the disputed delegates from Michigan and Florida, some of her advisers say, which would let her claim a victory on a battle she has fought for months. Accumulating victories this late in the primary season — as Mr. Obama looks so strong — might also bolster a bid for the vice presidency, should she decide to seek it. (Whether Mr. Obama would ask her, however, is very much in doubt.)

The two candidates campaigned across West Virginia on Monday, with Mrs. Clinton’s motorcade driving more than two hours through the winding hills of Appalachia, where she courted a relatively small number of voters in hopes of driving up her expected margin of victory. She is counting on a big victory to impress undecided superdelegates, the party leaders who will most likely decide the nomination.

Mrs. Clinton also wants to show strength in Kentucky and West Virginia — states Democrats have struggled to carry in presidential elections — not to mention, advisers say, pointing up what the Clinton campaign sees as the weakness of the Obama coalition. But advisers acknowledged that even if she won those states by wide margins, it was probably too late to change the dynamic of the nominating contest in her favor. “Obama is so far ahead at this point, it is hard to see anything we do, even big wins, being a game-changer at this point,” said one senior adviser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to assess Mrs. Clinton’s political fortunes....

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/13/us/politics/13dems.html?_r=1&oref=slogin