Hillary Clinton Sabotaging Obama for 2012 Shot?

There’s one conspiracy theory about Hillary Clinton that I keep hearing people mention, and which always seems a little far-fetched. And yet when you see what Hillary does, it keeps seeming more and more plausible.

That theory is that Hillary Clinton is deliberately sabotaging the Democrats’ chances in this 2008 election because she knows she isn’t getting the nomination at this point, and wants a Republican to win so she can run again in 2012. If Obama wins the general election, he’s the automatic nominee in 2012, and Hillary would have to wait until 2016 to try again. But if she can keep hurting Obama to weaken his chances of winning, then she has a better shot of getting the nomination in 2012.

These theories have been going around for weeks now, since Hillary refuses to drop out of the race no matter how impossible it is for her to win. Finally last night after North Carolina and Indiana, it sounded like everyone finally was on the same page:

Many of the pundits were in obituary mode. On Fox, Bill Kristol said there would be private conversations to orchestrate “a graceful ending to this race.” The MSNBC gang was off on a discussion of who would be Obama’s running mate. CNN was more cautious, with Anderson Cooper saying, “It’s too early to be talking about Hillary Clinton in the past tense.” But Carl Bernstein said two Hillary advisers had told him she would try for the vice presidency.

So how does Hillary react? By saying she’s staying in it, she’ll continue to fight to get Florida and Michigan’s pointless votes to count, and saying she won’t drop out until Florida and Michigan’s delegates are included. And trying to say that she still has a shot (from The Washington Post:

She said she would seek to have the Democratic Party’s rules and bylaws committee this month reinstate the outlawed Florida and Michigan delegations that support her — and “if people are not satisfied with that, they go to the credentials committee” at the convention, she threatened.

“I’m not ceding any vote now,” she said. “I’m staying in this race ’til there’s a nominee” who receives 2,210 delegates — a figure that assumes inclusion of the Florida and Michigan delegations. “We will continue to contest this election and move forward.”

CBS radio’s Mark Knoller asked if she was putting a Democratic victory at risk. “I just don’t believe that,” she said. “This is a dynamic electoral environment.” Venturing into the speculative, she added: “If we had the rules that the Republicans have, I’d already be the nominee.”

The $6 million she loaned her campaign? “It’s a sign of my commitment.”

Any plausible path to victory? “We’re going to work hard here in West Virginia,” she said. “Then it’s on to Kentucky, Oregon and the rest of the contest.”

Yes, her plausible path to victory is to stay in it, continue to get a few delegates here and there, which will never give her enough. She’s a smart woman, she can’t be stupid enough to think she can win the nomination, meaning that she doesn’t understand basic, elementary school math.

Then there are the rumors that Clinton is willing to drop out if the Obama campaign bails her campaign out of debt. Since the Clintons have plenty of money to get the campaign out of debt themselves — and let’s not forget that this is debt that they racked up running a smear campaign against Obama after everyone knew they had already lost — all this will do is hurt Obama’s funds when he needs to be fighting against McCain.

Now, Obama might not have a choice. If Hillary refuses to go away, it might be cheaper to just give her $10 million than to keep trying to swat her away in future states and legal battles — don’t think she won’t take this to court to keep trying to bring down Obama.

Does that sound like someone who’s trying to help the Democrats win, or someone who hopes the Democrats lose so she can run again in four years? It sounds like a conspiracy theory to me, but then it also seems to explain her actions better than any other explanation I’ve heard.