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Clinton endorser Barney Frank says "trailing candidate should drop out by June 3rd"
From <a href="http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/04/15/clinton-backer-trailing-candidates-should-drop-out-by-june-3/">CNN</a>, Clinton supporter Barney Frank is saying that the trailing candidate should drop out by June 3rd, and possibly sooner "if it seems inconceivable he or she could win the nomination." That's definitely not going to make her happy, as it is inconceivable that anyone other than Clinton will be trailing by June 3rd.
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Comments (10)
Reposted for legibility:
From CNN, Clinton supporter Barney Frank is saying that the trailing candidate should drop out by June 3rd, and possibly sooner "if it seems inconceivable he or she could win the nomination." That's definitely not going to make her happy, as it is inconceivable that anyone other than Clinton will be trailing by June 3rd.
April 15, 2008 4:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
That is an interesting development. Thank you for bringing this to my attention, Mr Hocking.
April 15, 2008 4:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
"if it seems inconceivable he or she could win the nomination."
What a pointless thing for Frank to say. Hillary has a chance of winning, just not a very good one. So it's still "conceivable" that she might win.
And she'll almost certainly win PA. Obama has been ahead in exactly one of the sixty or so PA polls on pollster.com, and even that one was within the margin of error. Winning PA will make a very small dent in her pledged delegate deficit, but Hillary and her supporters don't care about pledged delegates any more.
The reader e-mail posted by Josh earlier today captures the mindset:
"Oy" is right. To anyone capable of that kind of reasoning, it will be "conceivable" that Hillary might still somehow be given the nomination even when Obama is halfway through his acceptance speech at the convention.
April 15, 2008 5:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
Keep in mind, however, that only the "possibly sooner" part was tied to the "inconceivable" criteria. On June 3rd, whoever is simply trailing should drop out, according to Barney Frank. Barring the "second family" scenario, that will most definitely be Clinton.
April 15, 2008 5:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks for the clarification.
Maybe it's implicit in his statement that at whatever point he thinks Hillary ought to withdraw, he'll change his endorsement, and his vote as a superdelegate, to Obama. That would give the statement some real teeth.
April 15, 2008 5:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
Re-reading what I wrote in the summary, I see why you were confused about the "inconceivable" conditional. In combining the two statements, it was very reasonable for the reader to attach the conditional to both of them. Mea culpa.
April 15, 2008 5:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
Very gracious of you to say so, but it was clearly my fault for not clicking through and reading the original article before writing my first reply. Mea maxima culpa.
April 15, 2008 5:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
That CNN piece was so vague that I don't know what to make of it.
The source AP story, which also didn't include any complete quotes from Rep. Frank, didn't shed much light, either (Sorry about the giant link) -
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/D/DEMOCRATS_FRANK?SITE=CADIU&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
I don't know if this is news, or media maestro Barney Frank just getting himself some more attention.
April 15, 2008 5:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
I agree that better quotes would have been helpful, but what did you find vague? Am I getting my hopes up here? Please tell me I'm not…
April 15, 2008 6:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well the CNN story itself was quite clear in its take (the Rep. Frank thinks the race should end by June 3rd or sooner), but the lack of an actual quote to back it up leads me to question whether this, again, is Rep. Frank attracting attention to himself (not a criticism, it's the game) and CNN doing the same with a sensational take.
But I think there *may* still be reason to get our hopes up... It's pure speculation on my part, but this story in combination with Sen. Reid's comment today that, "This is all going to be over fairly soon." (there on the same CNN ticker page) leads me to suspect that this might have been a busy day in the Democratic leadership's behind the scenes effort to end the race.
I think they might be ready to roll out something big after Pennsylvania if Hillary Clinton doesn't win by a surprising margin. It's my impression that her whipping up of the "bitter" comments was the last straw for many top Democrats.
Again, just speculating. We'll see in about a week...
April 15, 2008 6:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
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