When Hillary Rodham Clinton made a rare stop in the Senate last week, she spoke from a lonely outpost at the end of the Armed Services Committee dais, eight empty chairs emphasizing the gulf between her and real Senate power at the chairman’s spot.It was illustrative of the inflexible senatorial math that will fix Clinton’s place in Congress should the Democratic nominating fight play out on its present course. While she has received millions of votes, stirred thousands of Americans at rallies, made hundreds of appearances and is just scores of delegates short of her goal, defeat would still return her to the Senate as No 36 out of 49 Democrats.But the seniority arithmetic is only the beginning. There is also the personal challenge of returning to a club where more Democratic members, some quite pointedly, favored Senator Barack Obama and spurned her. For Clinton, who has spent years cultivating friendships and raising money for colleagues, that had to hurt. Though the Senate is a place where rival lawmakers daily work side-by-side, this family feud was more public and pronounced than usual.“You haven’t seen this before,” said Bob Kerrey, a former Democratic senator from Nebraska who sought the presidency in 1992 only to return to the Senate after the nomination slipped away. “In politics, what goes around, comes around.“I would guess it will be easier for Joe Biden to get Hillary Clinton to support his bill than it will be for Chris Dodd,” Kerrey said, referring to the Delaware senator who stayed neutral after leaving the White House race and the Connecticut senator who did not.
