Legal Commentary

Two money stories about the Clinton campaign on Politico caught my eye this morning: Cash-strapped Clinton fails to pay bills and Clinton didn't pay health insurance bills.   Here is a damning excerpt from the first story:

[W]ord is getting around that Clinton?s campaign does not promptly pay those who labor to make her events look good, said an employee of the event production company Forty Two of Youngstown, Ohio.  ?I feel insulted by the way that the campaign treated this company and treated us personally,? said the employee, who did not want to be named talking about a client.

The Clinton campaign paid the company $16,500 to set up a stage, press riser, sound system and backdrops at a Youngstown high school last month for a raucous union rally, where an aggressive Clinton stump speech drew thunderous applause. But the Clinton campaign has yet to pay Forty Two for two other February events, and the employee said the campaign has stopped returning phone calls, e-mails and didn?t respond to a certified letter.

?We worked very hard to put together these events on a moment?s notice and do absolutely everything to a ?t? to make it look perfect on television for her and for her campaign,? said the employee.  ?Sen. Clinton talks about helping working families, people in unions and small businesses.  But when it comes down to actually doing something that shows that she can back up her words with action, she fails.?

Combine these money stories with Senator Clinton's foot-dragging on the release of her tax returns, and I am now thinking that the Democratic race could end a lot sooner than the Clintons' want to admit.    Even with a big win in PA, Senator Clinton is likely to remain behind on many fronts, and she will have an uphill battle in all but a few of the remaning primaries.   And if the Clintons' tax returns reveal that they are very rich (as this Money Magazine assessment suggests), and yet cannot manage to pay the bills, the hypocrisy of Senator Clinton's appeals to working-class Democrats may become too much for any smart superdelegate to deny. 

Though demographic realities suggest that Senator Clinton will prevail in PA, it now seems reasonable to predict that she may not be able to continue her campaign effectively beyond late April or early May.