For Clinton, fun and frolic in Puerto Rico: "A final journey"

[DeepModem Mom]

International Herald Tribune: For Clinton, fun and frolic in Puerto Rico
By Mark Leibovich
Published: June 2, 2008



SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico: While the Democratic Party was flirting with civil war, Hillary Rodham Clinton spent her weekend in the relative fun and frolic of the Caribbean. She danced to reggae-funk music on Friday night and spent the better part of Saturday partaking of a regional custom called caravan, in which she coursed through dense neighborhoods in the back of a pickup for six hours while waving, blowing kisses and bobbing to songs blaring from a sound truck 15 feet, or 5 meters, high....

"For me, it was a totally entrancing experience," Clinton said of the caravan in an interview on Sunday. The caravan was also a tidy reflection of the primary campaign itself: loud, winding and seemingly endless. And Clinton was determined to keep rolling to the end as if she were on the precise course she had set for herself. Last year at this time, "inevitability" was the watchword for Clinton's apparent electoral juggernaut. She was vacuuming up money, endorsements and all the Big Fuss that goes with front-runner status. Recent days have brought a different flavor of inevitability, that something is about to end.

They have been difficult days for Clinton, friends and advisers say, though not without a measure of defiant pride, satisfaction and gratitude as she concludes her primary march....Late last week, before taking off from Rapid City, South Dakota, Clinton wandered to the back of her campaign plane and held forth for the last smattering of her traveling media chroniclers. She spoke of the virtue of "finishing the job," a guiding principle through her career, whether in the context of staying in this presidential race, sticking with her marriage or outlasting her political adversaries....

"I feel good because so many people react to my having stayed," she said, mentioning that she had just met a basketball coach on a rope line in Rapid City who thanked her for setting a good example for her team by not quitting until the final whistle. In the interview, in San Juan on Sunday, Clinton said "finishing the job" was "fundamental to who I am and how I was raised," and added her customary note of defiance: "I'm very happy that I did despite rather difficult challenges by many who wanted this to end prematurely."...

Publicly, Clinton and her staff have been denying that their fight for the nomination was ending, even if the primaries were. Supporters keep calling her President Clinton, or Presidenta Clinton in Puerto Rico. Privately, however, staff members were discussing plans for after Tuesday, engaging in gallows humor (with one dubbing Puerto Rico the campaign's Fantasy Island) and acknowledging the obvious....Indeed, despite the invective and uncertainty that continues to surround the nominating saga, the last few days in Clinton's orbit have had a decidedly improvisational, nothing-to-lose feel. Early Sunday morning, after a night of phone-work from San Juan's Condado Plaza Hotel and Casino, Clinton strode into a nearby bakery, dressed in a bright baby-blue pantsuit, greeted voters (and ignored the media) for 15 minutes before walking out with a big smile....

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/06/02/america/clinton.php