Hillary ‘08: The Lieberman Option?

The idea of Hillary leaving the Democratic Party and continuing her run for the presidency as an Independent candidate sounds pretty crazy on its face, but is it?  There are a couple factor that, in my mind, point toward the possibility of such a run — whether it is being considered behind the campaign’s closed doors or not (and I’m guessing that it is).   

The first is her oft-stated declaration that she’s “in it to win it.” Rephrased, “there’s no way I’m getting out,” a fact she’s made abundantly clear in the last few weeks.  A second factor is that she’s increasingly running a campaign that lurches her already centrist campaign further to the right – the 3AM ad, raising the specter of a terrorist attack in the fall, and the anti-crime platform she launched today, which seems like a 1980s era throwback. In this vein, it’s no surprise to see Dick Cheney echoing the arguments the Clinton campaign is making to Dem superdelegates that the Rev. Wright issue makes Obama unelectable. A third factor is the increasing regularity in which she takes issue with the Democratic party and its leaders, to wit her comments yesterday re: FL/MI that: “I really don’t understand why the Republican Party very clearly decided what they were going to do, and the Democratic Party can’t decide…” Her odds of winning the Democratic nomination at this point are slim-to-none, meaning the differences with the party are only certain to widen — ala Lieberman in the fall of 2006. 

The argument against her pursuing an independent run is that there’s no way she can win – and that’s true.  But, an independent run is also the only way she can guarantee that Obama will lose to McCain — freeing her up for a run in 2012, when she will be 64.

This will certainly tear apart the party and burn all her bridges with the Democratic party, right?  Well, yes — but that outcome is already assured if she chooses to pursue the nomination through the convention as she has already said she is willing to do.  A convention fight (which she would almost certain lose) would be accompanied with all the defiance and outrage you would come to expect from the legendary Clinton fighting spirit and almost naturally fuel talk of an independent run in the immediate aftermath — taking with her her base of, yes, older women voters and perhaps some pockets of minority voters and the fabled “working class whites,” and of course, Lanny Davis. 

She would not be positioned well for the 2012 race, but a small chance trumps no chance at all, and it’s that small sliver of hope that’s keeping her in the race as it is.  And if there’s anything that the Clintons believe, it’s that there is no statute of limitations for redemption and that no argument is too ridiculous (think “big states,” caucuses, etc.) to achieve their ends.  I’m envisioning something along the lines of “I had to burn the Democratic party in order to save it.”