Bursting Damn. And Its Sole Cause.

GOP fundraiser Meg Whitman, a former Hewlett Packard executive, says she’ll endorse Hillary Clinton, arguing that Trump is “dangerous” and a “demagogue”:

“She revealed that Mrs. Clinton, the Democratic nominee, had reached out to her in a phone call about a month ago, one of the first indications that Mrs. Clinton is aggressively courting Republican leaders.”

One imagines many more such discussions are underway between Clinton and other Republicans, and that other endorsements may follow. Dam bursting?

Trump just said he has a secret plan to win. In reality, he has no strategy., Greg Sargent, Washington Post, this morning

Suffice it to say that I’m not the one who imagines many more such discussions are underway between Clinton and other Republicans, and that other endorsements may follow. And, slow as Clinton and her campaign are to pick up on what this election cycle is really about and what really is happening in, say, the Rust Belt, I’m betting that those many discussions indeed were underway but no longer are.

That is exactly the kind of thing that Bernie Sanders and his supporters had expected.  And it is quintessential Hillary Clinton: oblivious, reflexively triangulating, inalterably stuck in a pre-mid 2000s political era, and telling people what they already know about Donald Trump.

Inalterably, that is, until last week—when Clinton suddenly, finally, recognized that the political tectonic plates have shifted.  Or at least she appeared to, and I believe she did.

Presumably, Sargent’s surmise about many more discussions underway is out-of-date.  Whitman didn’t endorse Clinton a month ago; she endorsed Clinton now, when it’s become undeniable that Trump is not sane.

Yes, there are likely to be many more such endorsements, but that is because it has become simply untenable for someone like Meg Whitman—and the others who will be coming forward—to remain silent in this circumstance.  Trump is publicly descending into outright madness.  They know now that he can’t win.  And they are immensely relieved.

If Clinton thinks she needs to call anyone of that sort and secretly promise anything at all in order to entice an endorsement, she might consider why she thinks she needs that endorsement.  Only a perpetually out-of-sync-with-the-moment candidate would think an endorsement of that sort prompted by a phone call could matter to the election outcome. And I think Clinton is no longer that.

What matters is not Whitman’s endorsement but that she gave it because Trump compelled her to give it, not because Clinton called her a month ago and asked for it.  The dam is bursting, and it barely has anything to do with Clinton or whom she asks for an endorsement.