Cohen on Clinton

Muhammad Cohen, whose name is much admired here at Blog Simple for its cultural ambivalence, has a new article up at the Asia Times that looks at the Clinton/Obama race and has some interesting insights:

The pressure is not on Clinton to get out of the race, it's on the Democrats to get her out. She has nothing to lose at this point. Unliked and far down on the senatorial pecking pole, she stakes little by pursuing the nomination all the way to the convention. She's already been dissed by the people who never liked the Clintons, and by many she and Bill counted as friends. Yes, she's carrying millions in campaign debt, but the big expenses of the primaries are nearly behind her, and she's rich. Once the campaign is over, she and Bill can go back to raising money full-time from big donors, and they've proven very good at it.

The longer Clinton stays in the race, the bigger the prize package the Democrats must offer for her surrender. She's hoping, not foolishly, that the prize will eventually be the presidential nomination. Her ace in the hole is that it's been 32 years since any Democrat has won the presidency, except for a candidate named Clinton. In a party of losers, desperate for a winner, that could prove decisive.

Blog Simple, except in moments of festive brain short-circuits, has no expectation that either Democratic candidate offers any reversal, except in a cosmetic sense, on the American road to hell. We might be forced to admit, under duress, that Clinton would be more able in ousting the Bush/Cheney mad-dog kleptocrats that have been installed throughout the bureaucracy and the judiciary, but that would only be to bring in her own crew. Obama is still an unknown to a large extent, that's why he still has feathers.

But back to Mr. Cohen. He was the author of an earlier ATimes article that said that a strike on Iran would happen by August, already reviewed here. The particulars of the article were specifically denied by two Senators, and thus effectively buried. We'd just like to point out that such explicit denials are an exception, and thus increases our interest in the issue.