Thursday, May 22, 2008

Near-future news: Hillary concedes

A columnist for the Wall Street Journal believes that it's time for Hillary Clinton to make a graceful exit from her long-running campaign against Barack Obama for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination in this year's election.

So he has written her concession speech for her, framing it as a news report from the near future.

The article begins:
For those who can't handle the suspense, we fast-forward the campaign to June 2, in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. A wire-service reporter, who has covered the Clinton campaign for 17 months, files this story:

Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York has decided to end her historic quest for the Democratic presidential nomination. The decision comes one day before the South Dakota and Montana primaries, and a day after she received an extraordinary petition from senior members of the Democratic Party.
[...]
A draft of Mrs. Clinton's concession speech was obtained from persons close to the campaign. It is to be delivered tomorrow evening in South Dakota at the Sheraton Sioux Falls convention center.

~Daniel Henninger, "Hillary's Concession Speech", Wall Street Journal, 22 May 02008.

This is a neat bit of punditry straddling legitimate journalistic activism and satire. It would be good to see more of these -- in-world projections of preferred scenarios -- in the media.

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