Hillary Clinton’s chances of winning the Democratic Presidential nomination are now anywhere between 5 per cent to 20 percent. By rights she should be on her back, declared the loser by technical knockout. But not only is she standing; she is plunging ahead with a dogged ferocity.

In spite of Barack Omaha’s clear advantage in the popular vote and committed delegate tallies – a mathematical dominance unlikely to be reversed even in the remaining primary contests – Mrs. Clinton says she is being bullied by the “big boys” and vows to stay in the race until the democratic convention.

Her relentless campaign has inspired reporters variously to compare her, with a mixture of admiration and horror. Even the coughing spasms that have seizes her with alarming frequency these past few months have become an emblem of her fortitude. After she muscled her way through a foreign policy address, the New Yorker praised her ability to “suppress the coughing through sheer will.

So what makes Clinton run, even as her win at all cost strategy threatens her party’s chances against John McCain the republican candidate? The answer lies in her innately combative nature that drew Bill Clinton to her when “she was in my face from the start”. She is equally famous for a preternatural focus and what one of her friends called her “tunnel vision” along with a determination so unshakeable that her husband once told a visitor to the Oval office: “I might as well lift that desk and throw it out of the window to change her mind.” To reach her goals, she long ago learnt to embrace any tactic, however destructive.

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