After Obama clinches the nomination, Hillary will endorse him. What do you think that endorsement will be like? I have been able to imagine three scenarios for how it might happen, and I'll describe them here. I'm also sure that there are many other possibilities, some serious and some snarky, that others can add to mine. By mid-June, Hillary will have been voted for by millions of Americans, most of them Democrats, and while it is not to be presumed that all of them will follow her lead in switching allegiance to Obama, it is certain that what she says and how she says it will have a certain influence, perhaps a significant one. These three scenarios assume that either (a) She will come out swinging for Obama, using all the tactics we now think of as dirty and underhanded, (b) she will realize that the Rovian strategy did not work and will switch to echoing the themes in Obama's stump speech, or(c) She will sulk about losing in the primaries and will offer Obama only luke-warm support.
The first scenario has a certain attraction. On the one hand, it clashes with Obama's attempt to inspire a new kind of politics that frees itself from these partisan dirty tricks. But on the other hand, if we are going to be in a bar fight in the Fall, as I believe we will, she may be just the person to have our back against the swiftboaters. Obama can keep his distance, maybe even make it clear that he disapproves of such underhanded stunts. But I think we know by now that some Democrats respect this strategy, some grudgingly, some not so much. The downside of this scenario is that she might turn off or away many of the voters who have flocked to Obama because of his repudiation of her.
The second scenario is easy to like, but how likely is it. After spending so many months during the primaries attacking Obama for being an elitist, for being inexperienced, for being too loyal to his pastor, etc., would she be believable as a convert to the Obama vision? I suspect she might be more than we might think, because so many people already have given up expecting her to be honest and have supported her anyway (at least that's my suspicion, ie. no evidence), they might be willing to admire her for wanting to be on the winning side, no matter the policy differences she might have had. Many seem to think this is "realism."
I predict that many current Obama supporters will see the third scenario as the most likely, in part because they have not yet started to adjust their thinking to the post-primary period and in part because, of course, they have come to distrust Hillary and for good reason. But in trying to put myself in her position after a primary loss, I have a hard time seeing her as being luke-warm; and it's impossible to see her as being opposed to Obama's election. I know. I know. She seems like a Republican now and she did endorse McSame as a CIC. But she is a Senator from New York State. She has a reasonable chance to become Majority leader or be appointed to the Supreme Court. Does she really seem like a person who would not be realistic enough to calculate the cost to her of being luke-warm.
I am fully aware that some who write for this site claim knowledge (How, I cannot tell.) that she is planning for Obama to lose so that she can win after one term of McSame. I have no idea whatever what her deepest thoughts are, and neither does anyone else on this sight. Perhaps they are right. Perhaps not. Either way, it will most likely be just a month before Hillary endorses Obama, and I think we should be preparing for whichever of these scenarios seems most likely.