Tonight we received a call from David Wilhelm, Bill Clinton’s campaign chairman back in 1992, and a former chairman of the Democratic National Committee. He’s ready jump ship and endorse me. He’s also a super delegate so I get to add another delegate to the stack. Bill and Hillary will be pissed.
What made Wilhelm defect? He said it was the victory speech I gave after winning Virginia, Maryland, and Washington, D.C. The speech was pretty much the same I’ve used elsewhere, so I said, “David, there’s more to it than that. You know I’m preaching to the choir in that setting.”
He said, “Yeah, I know, but I saw John McCain’s victory speech on television about two minutes after yours. You can beat McCain. You can win this thing.”
Kind words from a defecting Clintonite, or sugar cubes from a Clinton mole who wants to be on my team? We’ll see. I asked David Axelrod to get me a tape of McCain’s speech and a tape of the last five minutes of my speech. I played them each, back to back, again and again.
First, my speech. It looked like a choir behind me. Then John McCain’s speech. It looked like a photo shoot from Gentleman’s Quarterly: The Mortician Edition.
That’s why Wilhelm defected.
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