Reading Between Hillary's Lines

Mark Finklestein at Newsbusters does a little parsing of Hillary Clinton's email to supporters announcing her event on Saturday:

Hillary Clinton is an Ivy League lawyer surrounded by Ivy League lawyers. Anyone who saw her advisor Harold Ickes in action at the DNC Rules Committee over the weekend knows that these are folks who can and will parse every jot and tittle. When they write a mesage, particularly a very momentous one, it should be taken at anything but face value.

So when, as a loyal member of Hillary's email list, I received a message [full text here] from her this morning, I was eager to read between the lines. On the one hand, Clinton did say that at an event on Saturday she would "extend my congratulations to Senator Obama and my support for his candidacy."

She added: "I have said throughout the campaign that I would strongly support Senator Obama if he were the Democratic Party's nominee, and I intend to deliver on that promise."

We'll analyze those two lines, but let's begin by noting what Hillary did not say:

-I lost.
-I'm withdrawing from the race and asking my delegates to support Obama.
-He won.
-He IS the nominee [or even the presumptive nominee] of the Dem party.

You'll notice that she wants to express "support for his candidacy", not his "nomination". Small stuff, but with the Clinton's, who still can't figure out what the definition of "is" is, this could be her way of keeping a toe in the door in case the Obama candidacy blows up.

Will Obama be there on Saturday? I haven't heard, but I don't think so. Once again this will be all about her, just as her speech was on Tuesday night. If she doesn't release her delegates, then she's planning to go to the convention and have those delegates vote for her. And who knows, maybe enough will be known about Obama at that point that some of those superdelegates may think better of an Obama nomination too.