HILLARY Clinton is using an old pals act to win the presidential nomination, a political manoeuvre which is threatening to split the Democrats and leaving some members fearing it will ultimately see them lose another election.
Clinton has inflated her numbers by calling on so-called Super Delegates, many of whom are close friends and colleagues. Like normal delegates, they vote to decide the presidential candidate at the summer convention, but unlike other delegates they a
re not elected. Instead they are appointed by the party top brass – who are overwhelmingly in Clinton's pocket.
Some Democrats fear a repeat of 1984, when Special Delegates gave party loyalist Walter Mondale victory over the younger, more radical Gary Hart.
This time, though, the stakes are higher. "We really need change, we need a new generation of leaders," says Patricia Horotan, a 36-year-old Democrat Party member in New York who plans to vote for Obama. "If Obama gets the most votes, and Hillary beats him by using her Super Delegates, there's going to be a riot."
The first two primary elections have seen Clinton win 24 candidates to send to the summer national convention, as against 25 for Barack Obama. But with the primary election less than two weeks old, 159 Super Delegates have aligned themselves to Clinton, three times as many as have declared for Obama, leaving him worse off than before the primary season started.
To put it in perspective, even if Obama won a clean sweep in the two biggest primary states in the union, California and New York, he would still not equal Clinton's present total.
It is a conundrum that highlights Clinton's grip on the Democratic Party leadership.
"Hillary Clinton has a near-lock on the Democratic establishment," says Thomas Edsall, a commentator with the Huffington Post, an influential politics website. "Clinton people are embedded in crucial positions."
When Bill Clinton stepped down as President in 2000, he ensured former government officials got plum jobs in the Democratic Party apparatus.
As a result, his influence, and that of his wife, is vast. The two key Democratic think-tanks are in Clinton hands, with Brookings Institute run by his former assistant secretary of state, Strobe Talbot, and the Centre for American Progress run by his former chief of staff, John Podesta. Meanwhile, Clinton's former chief-of-staff, Howard Wolfson, is a prominent figure in Glover Park, the biggest Democratic Party PR agency.
And then there are the lobbyists. Since Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff was convicted in 2006 of channelling millions of dollars from the gambling industry into congressional pockets, lobbyists have a bad name in America.
Yet Clinton has surrounded herself with some of the most influential lobbyists in Washington, starting with her current chief-of-staff, Mark Penn, who once lobbied Congress on behalf of Microsoft and the nuclear power industry.
The key to Clinton's success is her husband Bill, who has come out of the shadows to act as conductor for her campaign. "Right now we have the Clinton three-ring circus," says Carl Bernstein, author of a book on Hillary Clinton. "This is about the restoration of the Clintons to the White House."
But many inside the Democratic Party are uneasy. Some worry about opinion polls that show Clinton to be too divisive among Middle America to win a presidential race, with Obama more likely to win the crucial middle ground. "Clinton offers a very bitter polarising brand of politics. A lot of people (in the party] are sick of the way politics has been the last 15 years," says Philip Klein, a writer for The American Spectator magazine. "But there is a fear of retribution if they don't get behind the Clintons – the Clintons are known for being very vindictive."
One man who braved the brickbats this week was John Kerry, the 2004 Democratic Party candidate, who came off the fence to announce his support for the Obama campaign. Kerry is unlikely to set the Obama campaign on fire, but he will provide some ballast in the form of a party heavyweight willing to break ranks.
Obama, shut out of much of the Democratic machine, has appealed over the heads of party chiefs, finding a large constituency among the grassroots of the party. He has also garnered support from Hollywood and, most crucial of all, from America's top chat-show host, Oprah Winfrey.
But endorsements and a majority of voters will not be enough if Clinton chooses to play the Special Delegate card.
Three key figures with an arm-lock on the partyBILL CLINTON
The pin-up boy of the Democrats, his two terms as president in the Nineties is remembered as a golden age for the party. He has taken care to put key allies in important seats of power within the Democratic establishment, propelling his wife to the presidential candidacy.
HOWARD WOLFSON
Hillary Clinton's communications director was head of the New York office of Glover Park Group, the PR agency favoured by the Democrats. His wife, Terri, is chief-of-staff to the leader of the House Democrats in Congress, Nancy Pelosi, and his clients include Rupert Murdoch's news empire.
MARK PENN
Hillary Clinton's chief strategist is one of the most sought-after lobbyists in Washington. He is to Hillary Clinton what election guru Karl Rove was to George Bush. But his PR client list has raised eyebrows among Democrats as it contains firms the party has campaigned against, including tobacco giant Philip Morris and pharmaceutical companies. Democratic candidate John Edwards criticised Penn for allowing a subsidiary of his company to represent Blackwater, the American mercenary organisation involved in the shooting of civilians in Baghdad, but Hillary Clinton has made no protest.
