It was 15 degrees outside on a wind-whipped Pennsylvania Avenue as Hillary Clinton, smile firmly fixed in place, made an early-morning stop for a primary she didn’t have a prayer of winning.
Inside the high-ceilinged office of the National Council of Negro Women, as 20 journalists looked on, Sen. Clinton sounded almost wistful last Monday as she noted the racial and gender aspect of her contest against Barack Obama. “One of us will go on to make history,” she said, before adding that she believed she would be the one to make it.
Left unspoken — but very much on the minds of the modest press contingent — was that she had just lost four states to Obama, had been forced to lend her operation $5 million and had dumped her campaign manager. And no upbeat talk by the candidate was going to change that story line.
The media floodgates opened after Obama swept last week’s primaries in the District, Maryland and Virginia. Never mind that the two Democratic candidates remain close in the delegate count, or that Clinton has been described as doomed once before, in New Hampshire. She is drowning in a sea of negative coverage.