Entering the final leg of this years election cycle, presumptive Democratic nominee Barack Obama is finding that the water is getting a little hotter in some places, and where Bill Clinton is concerned, it's downright frosty.
It has to be a hard thing for a candidate to beat another candidate by a narrow margin in a contest that a large percentage of the public is not pleased with the outcome. Presidential politics is the hardest beast of all things political in the U.S. The normal thing for a Presidential candidate is that he receives the endorsement of all other living former Presidents of his party.
That's the NORMAL thing.
This campaign season has been anything but normal, given the demographics of the Democratic party's offerings as candidates for the Oval Office. Barack Obama stands to, possibly, gain the position and become the nation's first true black President, a position that former President Bill Clinton had claimed for himself during his tenure in office.
Yes, I know, Bill Clinton is a white boy from Arkansas, but if he wants to say he's black, don't make fun of him. It just makes him worse.
The main thing that Obama faces, however, in regards to Bill Clinton, is that the candidate that he defeated in running for the Democratic spot is Bill's wife. And now he needs Bill's support as he goes into the general elections. And according to Bill, it's going to take a lot for Obama to get that support.
A whole lot.
The Telegraph has learned that the former president's rage is still so great that even loyal allies are shocked by his patronising attitude to Mr Obama, and believe that he risks damaging his own reputation by his intransigence.
A senior Democrat who worked for Mr Clinton has revealed that he recently told friends Mr Obama could "kiss my ass" in return for his support.
Ouch.
And frankly, THAT is a mental image I could have done without.
Another source close to Bill said that the former President has been keeping his distance from Obama "because he still does not believe Mr Obama can win the election." This despite the announcement of a Clinton aide last week (not from Bill Clinton himself, who was out of the country at the time) that the former President would do whatever he could to support the Obama campaign on the way into the November elections. Clinton was also absent from last weeks party unity rally, attended by wife Hillary and candidate Obama, choosing to instead attend the London celebration of the birthday of Nelson Mandela.
And then there are the
Hillary supporters who absolutely will not support Obama as Democratic nominee come November.
Perhaps more telling of the mindset of Bill Clinton's frosty approach to Obama is the way Clinton feels he and wife Hillary were treated during her campaign against the Senator from Illinois. Harsh words were spoken by the Obama campaign, and there was a lot of mud-slinging done by both sides until Senator Clinton "suspended" her campaign "for the sake of party unity." It is because of this treatment that Bill still holds ill-will for Obama.
The former president and Obama have not talked, and, by all accounts, the man of the Clinton household remains hurt and resentful. Associates provide a variety of explanations for the Bill Clinton dilemma, none of them mutually exclusive.
Some say Bill Clinton not only wants Obama to reach out to him, but to also promise to lift the cloud of alleged racism -- an accusation that continues to eat at the man once dubbed the nation's "first black president." Clinton, these folks suggest, wants Obama to publicly exonerate him of the charge that he played the race card in the primaries.
Beyond that, some associates say, Bill Clinton wants Obama to reach out to him as a mentor, a guide who can lead Obama through the labyrinth of a tough presidential election. "Bill wants to be honored, to return to the role of Democratic elder statesman, and get rid of this image of him as a pol willing to do anything to win," said one associate.
Bill Clinton as a mentor for Obama. Personally, I'm not sure how that would work out for either of them; Obama already seems to have a way of his own in
swooning the ladies and coming across with a rock star image, and
he's already thrown his last mentor, Jeremiah Wright, under the bus. Perhaps Clinton should reconsider that aspect of his wish list for what he wants and expects from Obama.
Maybe Obama could start the fence mending process by calling Bill "
sweetie..."
