Terrified that their bloody primary campaign will doom them in the November presidential elections in the US, some Democrats are floating a consolation prize for Hillary Clinton -- Governor of New York State, according to a media report.
The travails of New York Governor David Paterson have opened up a new potential career path for Clinton, Newsweek says quoting unidentified well-informed Democratic Party insiders.
They want Clinton, a New York Senator, to consider the option if she concludes after the April 22 poll in Pennsylvania that she cannot overtake Barack Obama for the party's presidential nomination.
Hillary Clinton, while fully committed to continuing her presidential campaign, was said to be open to discussing the idea, while her husband and former President Bill Clinton rejected it out of hand, the magazine says in its upcoming issue.
With former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani now reported by the New York Post to be weighing a race for Governor, voters could see a Clinton-Giuliani match-up.
Peterson, a former state senator and lieutenant governor, succeeded Governor Eliot Spitzer, who was forced to resign earlier this month when he was caught in a prostitution ring.
A legally-blind African-American with plenty of friends in political circles, Paterson has admitted to drug use when he was young and to having had several extra-marital affairs, including one with a New York state employee.
The Governor has denied using taxpayer money for the affairs, but new rumours are swirling around the scandal-weary state capital, the report says.
In the event that Paterson had to resign, the New York State Constitution calls for a gubernatorial election this November. Clinton would be the favourite in that contest if she were interested, Newsweek says.
Under the scenario sketched out by the insiders, Newsweek says serving two years as Governor would give Clinton the executive experience to become the prohibitive favourite for the 2012 Democratic presidential nomination.
Clinton believes that Barack Obama may well lose this year to Republican John McCain, who would be 75 in 2012 and hence a possible one-term President, the report says.
Clinton would arguably be better positioned to replace McCain in the White House as a Governor than as a Senator.
The Senate might not be as attractive a job for Clinton as it once was, given that she would be surrounded by Democratic colleagues she believed betrayed her by supporting Obama, Newsweek says.
Among them, it counted Edward Kennedy, John Kerry, Jay Rockefeller, Claire McCaskill, Ben Nelson, Chris Dodd and Bob Casey.
"If Obama is elected President, she would have to carry water for him in the Senate. If McCain wins, it would be more of the same for Clinton in opposition to a Republican President. Being Governor of New York might be preferable even to being Senate majority leader another scenario being floated about Clinton's future," Newsweek says.
Even if the gubernatorial gambit does not materialise, the report says, it reflects deep concern among Democrats about how to extricate Clinton from what appears to be a losing campaign without doing further damage to the party.
Should she handily win all 10 remaining primaries, which even her campaign does not expect, she would still trail in pledged delegates and the popular vote excluding Florida and Michigan where re-votes are now unlikely, the report says.
The report quotes some Democratic super delegates or elected officials as saying the best exit strategy for her would be to suspend her campaign after winning Pennsylvania.
George H W Bush had ended his 1980 campaign against Ronald Reagan after defeating him in the Michigan primary.
That way, Hillary Clinton would go out on a high note, higher still if it was accompanied by reports that she could be headed for Albany, the report says.
For now, Clinton has rebuffed that advice and says publicly that she will stay in the race even if she wins Pennsylvania only narrowly, it adds, pointing out that she would be out if she lost in Pennsylvania.
Clinton campaign aides, Newsweek says, scoff at the gubernatorial trial balloon and say they expect her to play through to the end of the primaries in June.