Timing Is Everything... and Hillary Clinton Doesn't Have It

My pal Toby calls and points me to the big American Research Group survey numbers showing Clinton more than reversing the numbers from the two-month-old DWU poll. (See more coverage at SD Moderate and SD Politics.) But just as Clinton has the chance to turn South Dakota from kingmaker to queenmaker and stick a big finger in the eye of Daschle, Herseth Sandlin, and McGovern, The Huffington Post breaks the story (and Epp points us South Dakota readers there first) that as Clinton heads home to New York City, she's summoning her "top donors and backers" to hear what is sounding like a farewell speech.

The Huffington Post also notes that "Obama and Clinton spoke Sunday night and agreed that their staffs should begin negotiations over post-primary activities." For real nuts-and-bolts evidence that Clinton is about to fold, Marc Ambinder reports Clinton staffers are getting word that they should turn in their receipts by the end of the week, while Ben Smith at Politico reports that the campaign is offering advance staffers the option of coming to New York Tuesday or just heading home. Granted, the latter may not be a big deal: with the primaries almost done, there are no more big events for those advance people to arrange... and a campaign $20 million in the hole can't afford to pay staff to sit around and do nothing.

Of course, if that staff hadn't been sitting around doing nothing anywhere but the big states back in December and January, the most powerful Democratic political machine of the last two decades might not be getting beat by a freshman Senator from Illinois right now.

Timing: Pulling the plug just in time to make a win in South Dakota meaningless is the least of the Clintons' problems. The real timing problem that is bringing an end to the era of Bush-Clinton politics is the Clinton campaign's failure to learn the importance of small-town, small-state campaigning until it was too late.

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Update: Even Bill Clinton is acknolwedging the possibility of defeat. As he began his speech in Milbank today, he observed:

I want to say also that this may be the last day I'm ever involved in a campaign of this kind. I thought I was out of politics, 'til Hillary decided to run. But it has been, one of the greatest honors of my life to go around and campaign for her for president [Sarah Amos, ABC News, 2008.06.02].