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January 7, 2008

Utter Nonsense

It didn't work with Fred Thompson, and it won't work with Hillary Clinton. Matt Drudge says that Hillary's considering withdrawing from the race if she loses big to Barack Obama in tomorrow's New Hampshire primaries -- a notion that makes even less sense for Hillary than Fred:

Facing a double-digit defeat in New Hampshire, a sudden collapse in national polls and an expected fund-raising drought, Senator Hillary Clinton is preparing for a tough decision: Does she get out of the race? And when?!

"She can't take multiple double-digit losses in New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada," laments one top campaign insider to the DRUDGE REPORT. "If she gets too badly embarrassed, it will really harm her. She doesn't want the Clinton brand to be damaged with back-to-back-to-back defeats."

Meanwhile, Democrat hopeful John Edwards has confided to senior staff that he is staying in the race because Hillary "could soon be out."

This makes sense coming from the Edwards campaign. They've mostly lived in Fantasyland throughout 2007, and what better way to start 2008 than by hoping all of his competition packs up and goes home? The biggest laugh of this meme, and of the supposed Edwards decision to outlast Hillary, is that he polls worse than she does throughout the rest of the country. Much worse.

A big loss tomorrow would make it much more difficult for Hillary to win, but it doesn't make it impossible. She has a strong organization and some strength in the coastal states. She may have to rely on a Rudy Giuliani strategy of laying back and hoping to win the really big states, while leaning on the superdelegates to carry her over the top. She's got money and she has the Clinton machine. They didn't keep that oiled and tuned just to see her drop out after a couple of setbacks.

This likely came from one of the competing campaigns, and it wouldn't surprise me at all if it came from Team Edwards. He has little to keep him going than wild hope of a Deus ex machina intervention that knocks everyone else out of the race. A flashing siren on Drudge won't be enough.

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