Politics Now

  WASHINGTON - Sen.  Hillary Rodham Clinton is fully assuming her role as the state's junior Democratic senator after losing a long and bitter fight for the presidential nomination to Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois.
     In a conference call with New York journalists on Tuesday, Clinton was constrained to say she fully expects to get along with Rep. Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill., who will become Obama's White House chief of staff. The issue was prompted by reports that as first lady Clinton tried to have Emanuel fired when he was in President Bill Clinton's White House political office.
   The respected Jackie Calmes of the New York Times has written "in the early months (of 1993), the first lady, Hillary Rodham Clinton, maneuvered to have Emanuel fired. Clinton's chief of staff, Mack McLarty, instead demoted him from political director to the press office."
    Calmes reported Rahm didn't quit, but took the demotion, lost his big office, and moved into a tiny room at the White House press office and "just went to work." Since leaving the White House, Emanuel was elected to Congress, ran its 2006 Democratic campaign, and was elected chairman of the party's House caucus.
     The New York Daily News reported that Clinton hinted that the Obama transition team has not singled her out for any legislative initiative, such as health care reform. But Clinton has already said she intends to be in the thick of that battle.
      However, the staff of the ailing Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., has been hard at work on health care legislation that they will introduce at the opening of the new Congress in January. Kennedy was a strong supporter of Obama's nomination challenge to the one-time front runner Clinton.
     Media friends of the Clintons', such as Bonnie Erbe, have noted there is still tension between elements of the two Democratic camps, despite the many appearances that Bill and Hillary made in Obama's behalf, because Team Obama hasn't moved to retire what is widely described as a $10 billion Hillary Clinton campaign deficit.
    But it is a $21 million campaign deficit, according to Congressional Quarterly's Moneyline tracking Web site, not $10 million. That's as of Sept. 30. Complicating the campaign help issue is the fact that the senator herself shifted $10 million of her Senate campaign fund into her presidential effort in 2007, and there is still a reported $6 million surplus in her Senate campaign account and she doesn't have to run for the Senate again for four years.
    Friends of the senator have advanced her name as secretary of state, or a Supreme Court justice, if there is an early retirement from the bench after Obama is inaugurated Jan. 20. The State Department balloon hasn't floated very high.  New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, who resisted heavy pressure from Bill Clinton and endorsed Obama, is the latest possibility mentioned for the state job.
    What do you think Sen. Clinton should concentrate on? Where can her influence make a difference for Upstate New York? What role do you see for her in the Obama administration?

--Douglas Turner