A Fly on the Hillary Clinton Campaign Wall

Earlier this week, I had a unique opportunity. A friend of mine was very involved in Hillary Clinton's campaign, and indeed, raised a significant amount of money on her behalf. So significant, in fact, that he still has a voicemail message saved from Hillary Clinton herself thanking him for everything he did. As a result of his esteemed status in "Hillaryland", my friend (as well as others who had raised extraordinary amounts of money for Hillary) were invited to participate in something of a post mortem conference call this week with some of the very top members of Clinton's campaign staff . Knowing that I'm a political junkie, he invited me to listen in on the call. I swore that I would keep my phone muted, and I did, even though I was tempted at several times to speak up! Here are a few of my observations and reactions from this conference call -- the closest I will ever come to being a fly on the Hillary Clinton Campaign wall...

1) Because of Hillary's perceived inevitability early on in the election, she and her campaign raised enormous amounts of money. So much so, in fact, that many contributors "maxed out" for the primary election period, giving their limit of $2300 per person. As a result, the Clinton Campaign began (quite presumptuously) accepting contributions for the General Election, a period in which another $2300 per person can be given, and ultimately she received a reported $24 million in contributions for the General Election. Since Clinton lost the nomination to Barack Obama, she obviously will not be participating in the General Election now, and so there is a significant amount of money in the Clinton Campaign coffers with no precise purpose or destination. Most campaigns would, I believe, return this money to the donor given that the reason for which it was initially contributed has been rendered moot. And though it shouldn't have surprised me, it still did when I heard what the Clinton Campaign would like to do with that money. Understanding that my friend and the others on the call who had raised this General Election money would likely be receiving calls from people who had contributed to Hillary at their urging, a top Clinton official explained that there were two options. The first would simply be a refund, and if that is what a contributor wanted, the campaign would be cutting checks within the next couple of months in order to refund that money. The second and clearly preferred option for Clinton and her campaign was for the donor to indicate his or her approval for their $2300 General Election contribution to be allocated to Hillary's Senate Reelection Campaign in 2012! 2012? Four years away? And from donors who -- in many cases -- are not even residents of New York, the state in which Hillary would be running for reelection? I thought this was a remarkably audacious suggestion -- even by Clinton standards -- particularly when I and everyone on that call know full well that the money will not be used for her reelection campaign in four years -- an eternity in politics. No, that money would, through some undoubtedly obscure campaign finance law loophole, be used to pay down the enormous amount of debt her campaign incurred -- allegedly over $20 million. If I were a Clinton contributor, I would not be too eager to have my $2300 go toward retiring the campaign's debt, particularly when much of the debt epitomizes the mistakes Hillary and her team made, the same mistakes that find her now watching from the political sidelines as Obama assumes leadership of the Democratic Party. The Clintons simply never cease to amaze me. (In yesterday's Wall Street Journal, an article by Christopher Cooper explains all of this extremely well. Take a look here).

2) The Clinton supporters on this call -- while obviously among the most devoted -- are likely representative of at least a portion of Clinton supporters across the nation. And they are really, really mad. They are mad at Obama, they are mad at the media, and they are just plain mad that Hillary lost. Big deal, right? Of course they're mad -- but they'll get over it, won't they? After hearing them on this phone call, I'm not so sure. They made it very clear to the Clinton Campaign bigwigs on the call that they had absolutely no intention of raising money for Obama, in any way helping Obama, or, most ominously, perhaps of even voting for Obama, UNLESS he picks Hillary to be his running mate. Now that is newsworthy, because guess what? Obama is not going to pick Hillary as his running mate. He'd be crazy to do so. They not only dislike each other, but she actively undermined and openly disrespected Obama and his candidacy -- particularly in the last couple of months. Not only that, does Obama really want to have to deal with Bill Clinton hanging around the White House? I think not. Bringing the Clintons back to the White House is not "change we can believe in". So that presents a potentially prickly issue, then. If the people on this call are sincere, (and presuming Obama does not, in fact, select Hillary as his vice president), Obama is going to go to battle against McCain without the support of some key fundraisers in the Democratic Party. Further, if one presumes that the people on this call are even partially representative of the "rank-and-file" Hillary supporters out there, Obama may have to face McCain without the support, help and, most importantly, the votes, of a significant number of people. The conference call participants genuinely believe that Hillary was wronged, that Obama mistreated her, that the media were conspiring against her, and that in general, she was the victim of sexism in falling short of winning the nomination. Setting aside for a moment the validity or accuracy of those beliefs, their anger was very apparent, it was intense, and it was real. Obama needs the people on this call as well as the many others like them to be behind him between now and November. He faces quite a challenge now, as the only way that he can seemingly appease these Clintonites is by adding Hillary to his ticket. If he does that though, he risks turning off an even larger number of voters in the process.

Like everything else in this absolutely extraordinary election year, this will be interesting to watch, and I'll do my best to help guide you through it all here at Bragging Writes!