Keeping your friends close

Via Political Wire: So ex-Iowa gov Tom Vilsack does his also-ran bit in the Democratic sweepstakes. He amasses little support, but a fair amount of debt. He bails out of the race. He throws his support to Hillary Clinton. Mirabile dictu, forty-five Clinton donors find it in their collective heart to pay off nearly $90,000 of his campaign debt. It’s all very tidy, in a Sopranos-ish kind of way.

Thinking that this arrangement seems seems all mobbed-up and generally wrong? How unsophisticated you are, says polisci guy Larry Gerston:

San Jose State University political science professor Larry N. Gerston, noting that such arrangements were not unusual, called it “a pretty good investment by Hillary Clinton,” given Vilsack’s standing among Iowa Democrats.

“He is a ‘name’ there, and that is a wide-open race,” Gerston said. “Is this anything new? It is not. Far be it from me to say it is wrong, because there are few wrongs. There are far more opportunities than there are wrongs.”

Yes, far be it.

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