Hillary Rodham Clinton plays for keeps and doesn’t take prisoners — much like her husband, former President Bill Clinton.
Don’t believe it? During the closing of her 2008 campaign, two of her closest advisers created what Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes dramatically term a “political hit list” in an excerpt from their new book. The spreadsheet documented not only which Democrats had and hadn’t endorsed her, but any favors they’d done, extenuating circumstances, and, at one point, a betrayal rating on a 1-7 scale.
Here are some of the known sevenss:
- Claire McCaskill — “Hate is too weak a word to describe the feelings that Hillary’s core loyalists still have for McCaskill,” Allen and Parnes write. The Clintons supported her in 2006 (as did Obama), but she coordinated her endorsement of Obama with two other women for maximum effect.
- Ted Kennedy — Delivered perhaps the most important endorsement to then-Sen. Barack Obama right before Super Tuesday in 2008. Years later, an aide joked about the fate of Hillary’s foes saying, “Bill Richardson: investigated; John Edwards: disgraced by scandal; Chris Dodd: stepped down. Ted Kennedy: dead.”
- Also on the list: John Kerry, Patrick Leahy, Bob Casey, Chris Van Hollen and Jay Rockefeller.
Most are well aware that politicians keep track of their allies and enemies — it’s the scope of the Clintons’ sphere that makes it unusual.
“It wasn’t so much punishing as rewarding,” one source said. “I honestly think that’s an important subtlety in Bill Clinton, in his head. She’s not as calculated, but he is.”
Other Clinton aides likewise downplayed the “enemy” half of the list. “I don’t want to make her sound like Nixon in a pantsuit.”
