The Daily Background
| Is Hillary telling the truth about her husband’s race in 1992?
by Arlen Parsa
Clinton’s new spin is that it’s not all that unusual for Democrats not to have a presumptive nominee until June. She claims:
“I campaigned with my husband until he wrapped up the nomination in June [1992],” she said. “I thought it was fun we had a good time. I’m prepared to go the distance.â€
Is this historically accurate? She certainly campaigned with him, but did it really take him until June to wrap up the nomination?
A little digging doesn’t seem to support that claim. Wikipedia writes of the 1992 Democratic primary:
Clinton won a major victory in Illinois and began to sweep the rest of the country, when as part of a minor backlash Brown won in Connecticut. There was a show-down brewing in New York between the two rivals, when a group of people decided to force Tsongas, who was still on the ballot there, back in the race. This was surprisingly successful, and Tsongas came in a close second, effectively ending Brown’s challenge. The rest of the primary campaign unfolded uneventfully.
Illinois voted on March 17th that year, and New York went on April 7th. The convention was in July.
A little Lexis-Nexis-ing reveals that the papers were referring to Clinton as the “presumptive nominee” months before Bill supposedly clinched it in June.
The Boston Globe, March 22nd, 1992:
Like other presumptive nominees, however, Clinton’s triumph merely gives him the opportunity to experience a fundamental truth about democracy’s most grueling experience: the climbing only gets tougher the higher you go.
The Boston Globe, April 18th, 1992:
The season has opened on vice presidential speculation since last week’s New York primary pegged Bill Clinton the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee.
USA Today, April 29th, 1992:
On the most basic political level, Clinton’s victory - his best showing in six weeks - cemented him as the party’s presumptive nominee. It may even quiet the sizable chorus of Democrats who have been warning that Clinton is a fat target to send against Bush.
By the way, and this is a tiny little side note, Clinton is still complaining about debates. She said yesterday: “I think the fact that he won’t debate me says a lot about his campaign.”
In reality, they’ve already had 18 debates and they’ve both agreed to two additional ones in the coming weeks. Obama will debate her, he just wants to do it two more times instead of three so he can spend more time campaigning with actual voters (his campaign has decided that this is a better strategic use of his time). To say that he “won’t debate me” is a really ridiculous claim that just isn’t supported by the facts.
Update: Clinton to reporters:
“You know, I know that some of you have only covered the ‘04 and the 2000 campaign, which were really kind of anomalies. The nominees were determined early, but that’s not the usual pattern. My husband didn’t wrap up the nomination in ‘92 until June, and usually it takes a while to sort all this out.”
Clinton obviously doesnt want it to reflect badly on her that she didnt have the nomination “wrapped up” by super tuesday and that she is now in a position to lose.
On the debate thing, she originally wanted 5 debates before March 4th, which was ludicrous, one of them on Fox “News”. Obama agreed to 2 of them which at least sounds reasonable. This type of campaigning causes me to lose any smidgeon of respect I may have had for her.
[…] I asked if Hillary was telling the truth about how common it was not to have a nominee before the convention. She said to reporters that, […]
[…] didn’t wrap up the nomination in June. In February, Hillary made a similar claim which prompted me to do a little digging back through the Lexis Nexis to find out when it was that he actually did secure the Democratic […]