What is Clinton Doing?

This is an honest question, to which there are no simple answers. It is not just that I don't have the answer, but it doesn't seem anyone has the answer. A good friend of mine said to me yesterday, "now Burns, you know I'm no card carrying Democrat, but I'm watching this thing and it just seems to me like Hillary is just dividing the party further. What is she doing?" My answer to that is this: I follow politics as closely as anyone I know. I read and watch pretty much everything I can. I'm certainly not an insider but as an observer--I have no idea what her strategy or plan is.

The charitable view is that she knows it is over and that it's a good thing that she has stayed in the race. She was going to win West Virginia and Kentucky (and likely Puerto Rico) whether she stayed in the race or not. Better to have the eventual nominee of the party lose in these states to a candidate who is still running than one that has dropped out. I think that is the charitable view but I don't believe that it's the most plausible scenario.

What seems to be happening, with the new mantra of the Clinton lead in the popular vote numbers, is that they still have some kind of hope that when the DNC Rules Committee gets together on May 31 and they decide what to do with Michigan and Florida, a miracle will occur. Even if she got everything she wanted at this meeting and got the delegates from Michigan and Florida seated, and counted the popular vote differentials from each state (giving Obama no votes at all from Michigan where he wasn't on the ballot, and incidentally is the way she "has" the popular vote lead), even then, she still has no path to the nomination. As Russert said last night, back in the winter and before a single vote was cast, members of both campaigns, the DNC and prominent Democrats all agreed on one thing: delegates nominate! If delegates nominate then Obama is the presumptive Democratic nominee, no matter how rosy a scenario Clinton paints with the popular vote.

I think it is also important to make the point that Hillary's "every vote counts" mantra is contradicted by the strategy laid out above. It is contradicted by the fact that she is claiming a popular vote lead that discounts 45% of voters in Michigan who did not vote for her. What about those votes? Why do those votes not count?

I just finished reading Terry McAuliffe's book, What A Party, and it is an excellent book that I recommend to anyone interested in politics, political stories or great story telling in general. In the book, he talks about his time as DNC Chair, dealing with the 2004 election. He talks about how important it was for the party to have a nominee to line up behind by March of '04 because it was important that the party be unified and not distracted by a drawn out nomination fight. It was important for fundraising and it was important so that they could focus on the major competition of beating the GOP. It was important because it would unify the party. Now, I realize the McAuliffe is in a different role now as the Chair of the Clinton campaign, but does it not still feel more than slightly disingenuous that he is out there saying it doesn't matter that this nomination fight has now carried into May and will likely continue at least until the beginning of June?

These are my thoughts and speculation on the issue, but mostly I am wondering what is the end game and what is Clinton doing?