Hillary's next stop -- Ben Tre,Vietnam

grantcart

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Tue Mar-11-08 11:18 PM
Original message

Hillary's next stop -- Ben Tre,Vietnam

Edited on Tue Mar-11-08 11:35 PM by grantcart

To understand the analogy you have to remember the two key phrases that are most remembered (arguably) out of Vietnam.

The first was 'The light at the end of the tunnel'.

It became a regular feature of the military briefing that every 6 months or so a young briefing officer would tell the assembled press corp "that real progress was being made and we are now begining to see the light at the end of the end of the tunnel". Eventually the press corp became more jaded and the comment would be received with loud laughter.

The obscure phrase would become a staple charachterizing the up beat flavor of communication hacks trying to promote a dying cause.

We stepped into the 'light at the end of the tunnel" phase on Feb 11, 2008, when the Clinton campaign firmly proclaimed:
http://cbs4denver.com/national/democrats.hillary.clinton.2.651468.html

"We always knew February was gonna be a good month for him . . . .March is gonna be a better month for us."

With Obama's last two victories he secured that he will net the most elected delegates in March (as he had done in Jan and Feb)

When an object could not be taken in Vietnam it was often decided that it was better to destroy it.

Writing about the provincial capital, Ben Tre, on February 7, 1968, Arnett said: "'it became necessary to destroy the town to save it,' a U.S. major says." To this day, "Ben Tre Logic" is a common saying for whenever a "logical" conclusion is to destroy something out of the perceived best interests of everyone involved.

The kitchen sink campaign is clearly not going to work.

The Clinton campaign is now engaged in a campaign that has two parrallel rails. On the one hand prolong the campaign by reigniting Florida and Michigan. As long as you can prolong it there is always the possibility, growing admittedly remote that the Obama campaign will trip and cause an implosion and you can take the nomination away at the finish line.

If that is not possible then the full logic of Ben Tre will be utilized. By endorsing McCain's 'superior CIC' experience, create bitter divisions (sustained campaign by Ferraro), fostering the feeling that somehow the nomination was unfairly taken with illegitimate means, unfair caucuses, unseated delegations, disenfranchised voters. The general election campaign of 2008 will be destroyed so that the campaign of 2012 will be saved.

And at the same time hoard huge amounts of campaign largesse. With $ 30 million in GE funds that cannot be touched and accumulating funds at $ 1 million a day while spending frugally in media buys (only $ 6 million for Ohio and Texas) it will be possible to leave the 2008 campaign with a future campaign warchest of $ 50 million.

And the final denouement will be to hint that you really wanted to be a team member and would have taken the VP position if somebody hadn't been so egotistical as to not to offer it.

Right now we are like the villagers of Ben Tre and we can hear the helicopters coming.