Scroll for update.Drudge has the siren blaring.
TALK OF HILLARY EXIT ENGULFS CAMPAIGNSDan Riehl isn't buying it.
Mon Jan 07 2008 09:46:28 ET
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."
"Her money is going to dry up," Edwards confided, a top source said Monday morning.
MORE
Key players in Clinton's inner circle are said to be split. James Carville is urging her to fight it out through at least February and Super Tuesday, where she has a shot at thwarting Barack Obama in a big state. But others close to the former first lady now see no possible road to victory, sources claim.
Developing...
Hmm. They could be aiming at the "Comeback Queen" angle if she indeed resuscitates her flailing campaign, but at this juncture, a huge loss in New Hampshire could lead to an irreversible slide.
Latest numbers still show a double-digit lead for Obama.
UPDATE: Aww, let's all feel sorry for her now.
Not.
ABC News' Kate Snow Reports: Campaigning in New Hampshire one day before the first-in-the-nation primary, Senator Hillary Clinton got emotional and had tears in her eyes as she spoke with voters about how hard it is to balance a busy campaign life and her passion for the country's future.More at Hot Air, Michelle Malkin, Captain's Quarters, Blue Crab Boulevard.
UPDATE II: AP from last month: Has the political risk of emotion, tears faded?
WASHINGTON — Having a Muskie moment isn't necessarily a bad thing anymore.
Tears, once kryptonite to serious presidential candidates, today are more often seen as a useful part of the political tool kit.
Mitt Romney this week became the latest candidate to show his sensitive side. Tears welled in his eyes Monday as he spoke on the New Hampshire campaign trail about watching the casket of a soldier killed in Iraq and imagining that he had lost a son of his own. A day earlier, he choked up on NBC's Meet the Press in speaking about his religion.
His campaign seemed skittish about two such episodes in as many days.
But for a candidate who sometimes comes across as cool and detached, showing a little emotion may not be something to cry about.
The nation has come a long way in the 35 years since a New Hampshire sob story ended then-senator Edmund Muskie's 1972 presidential campaign. Muskie's campaign slid off the tracks after it was reported that he had cried in response to a newspaper attack on his wife. He went to his grave maintaining that it had been melted snowflakes, not a tear, in his eye.
Fifteen years later, in 1987, former Democratic congresswoman Pat Schroeder got grief for crying as she announced that she would not be a presidential candidate.
She's still catching flak about it today, mostly from women.
"Oh, my gosh, I got a devastating e-mail about it from a woman writer just a couple of days ago," Schroeder said in an interview. "I want to say, 'Wait a minute, we are talking 20 years ago.' It's like I ruined their lives, 20 years ago, with three seconds of catching my breath."
Schroeder says she used to keep a "crying file" on weepy politician episodes, but it got so huge she threw it out.
"Guys have been tearing up all along and people think it's marvelous," Schroeder said, pointing to episodes stretching back to Ronald Reagan.
But for female candidates, crying clearly is still in the no-fly zone.
Hillary Rodham Clinton is not allowed to cry.
At least not in public.
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