This brief diary is inspired by this diary, and by one of my favorite movies, The Hunt for Red October.
A great deal of talk and thought around Democratic circles these days concerns how the party will be able to come together after the contentious, sometimes nasty, and frighteningly too often absolutely batshit crazy primary season. Personally, I've never worried that a huge chunk on Hillary's supporters would end up actually voting for McCain, or even staying home in November, because I think that the vast, overwhelming majority of them are Democrats who share our values, believe strongly that Hillary was simply the stronger choice between two (or more) excellent candidates, and understand that the worst thing that could happen to this country right now would be for John McCain to become president in January. But even if the lunatics at His44 and No Quarter represent only 5% of Hillary's support, that is too much and it could have a negative effect on getting a Democrat in the White House.
The message confusion out of Camp Clinton on this final day of primaries, I believe, is as some have speculated, a reflection of the disconnect between what the "official line" is coming out of the campaign, and what the top level people know to be the truth. I've always had more respect for Bill and Hillary than to think that they actually BELIEVE the bullshit that they've been spreading for the past couple of months to the press, and increasingly as the press has stopped listening, to their hardest core of supporters. They're too smart and politically savvy, but they also were playing to win, and they pulled out all the stops in their attempt to do so. Obama recognizes this, I'm sure, and while he may be unhappy that he had to bear some of the brunt of the flailing attacks, he knows that politics is a messy game, and often it takes the tenacity of a pit bull to win a fight worth fighting.
Anyway, back to the movie, there's a scene near the end of the film, where Captain Ramius and his loyal officers have to get the regular crew off the submarine so they can complete their defection in secret. They fake a reactor leak, get the crew to lifeboats, and vow to not let the boat fall into enemy hands by staying on board and scuttling the ship. The crew think that they are heroes, and fighters, the doctor even saying to the Captain that he would "receive the Order of Lenin for this." Meanwhile, the Captain and his officers are below finalizing their plans to defect to the Americans with the top secret submarine.
At one point, while actually fighting a fellow Russian sub sent to sink Red October, a torpedo explosion is seen on the surface, and one of the crew stands up and shouts in Russian, "The Captain is fighting them!!!" All the crew is heartened and cheer for the Captain's glorious, heroic end.
This is what I suspect, and hope, is going on at Camp Clinton today, and for the next couple of days or weeks probably. In order to bring peace to the Party, Hillary has to wrestle in the mad dogs that she has unleashed in her scorched earth campaign to win the nomination. It's not easy to unleash that kind of vitriolic energy and then recapture it, and more importantly, redirect it at a new target.
The only way to do it is to let the jets cool over a bit of time, while simultaneously keeping up the appearance of continuing the good fight. If Hillary were to stand up tonight and concede, and then endorse Obama, as so many of us wish she would, the hard core of her supporters would see their own Jesus as a Judas, so zealous are they in their faith at this point.
So what I predict will happen is that Hillary will "concede" that Obama has won the most delegates, but will somehow keep hope alive with her supporters that this might not be over yet. The rhetoric from Davis and Ickes and McCauliffe and others will tone down over the next week or two to allow everyone to catch their breath and bearings, and then the least mad of the hard core will begin to see the situation more as it really is. Reality will set in, as it has for most people already. Those stages of grief for those who are still in denial will be long and painful, but they will be eased by the knowledge that Hillary did everything she could to win short of stealing the nomination, and that will bring comfort. Maybe, as so many already have, some will begin to see Obama not as a monster, but as a good Democrat who shares nearly all of their goals and values, and they will remember that that is how they once felt about him six or nine months ago. Some may even come to see him as something extraordinary, as many of us have since we converted from supporters of Edwards or Dodd, or someone else.
So if Hillary appears to be continuing her Kabuki dance in the coming days, even after the math is over and done, understand that it is not being done for your benefit, nor for the benefit of the last remaining superdelegates, nor for the press itself. It is being done for Hillary's closest and most loyal supporters, in order to help soften the fall from the trip they've been on for the last year. If you meet one, buy him or her a beer, and know, but don't tell them explicitly, that the beer will help to make the paint stop dripping off the walls and the grain in the wood door stop swimming.
These are friends, and we need each other.