How Much Longer Can This Continue?

For more than a month I have called a moratorium on the Democratic race only blogging on the hype of the contests as presented by the media. After the two primaries in Indiana and North Carolina, it is apparent that Hillary Clinton can not win the nomination. Even if she were to win the remaining contests she would still not be able to catch Obama. So what is the point of continuing? Hillary Clinton has waged a strong campaign and is deserving of praise for being able to recover when most had pronounced her campaign dead. The time has now come for Hillary to set aside her personal belief that the nomination was inevitably hers and to do what is best for the Party. What is best for the Party is for Hillary to gracefully suspend her campaign and allow the Party to coalesce behind the presumptive nominee Barack Obama.

I sent a message to one of her most loyal supporters early Wednesday morning asking what are her realistic options? "She has only one option," he replied. "Gracefully exit and help unify the party to beat [John] McCain." How quickly, he was asked. "I would advise them to figure out how to do it as soon as this weekend," he replied.

Another veteran Democrat who has backed Clinton was equally pessimistic in his private assessment. "It's hard to see a path toward the twin goals of Hillary winning and the party uniting," he wrote. "Her strategy cannot be to destroy the village in order to save it. The superdelegate dam is about to break. Hillary losing [George] McGovern is like LBJ losing [former CBS News anchor Walter] Cronkite."[1]

Even Hillary’s most ardent supporters have got to realize that the only way for her to win at this point would be at the expense of the Party and its opportunity to win in November. In spite of his flaws and inexperience Barack Obama has done what many thought was impossible, he was able to upset the candidate who began this campaign with money, name recognition, and history. I understand the difficulty of what Hillary and her supporters must do, it will be difficult to acknowledge that they will not be the campaign of history. But lets be honest its over. If anyone can explain to me how Hillary can win and not destroy the Party I am all ears. The time for emotionalism is past, the numbers in all categories are against her and now the superdelegates are deserting her. The lost of George McGovern is huge and cannot be underestimated.

It has been stated that with only 3 weeks to go we should allow Hillary to finish out the primary process. My question is why? The campaign can only get more contentious and it will only serve to strengthen John McCain. If we were not talking about Hillary would we even be having this conversation. I think not. Hillary has nothing left to prove, she has demonstrated her toughness, her tenacity, and her ability to survive. Hillary has vowed to continue fighting, my question is fighting for what? If you can’t win mathematically then your only purpose can be to damage Obama so much prior to the convention that his candidacy is unviable. If that is the case then she loses even if she wins and not only her but the Democrats as well. It is time for the Party leaders to put an end to this. They have been reluctant to rein in the Clinton’s but this has to end. The so-called Party leaders had better grow a pair of balls and put an end to this lesson in futility, before the Party splits along lines that cannot be repaired.

I am so tired of listening to the Hillary apologists who say not to worry, the Party will be unified by the fall. I think this is being unrealistic and not looking at or listening to the voters. What Hillary supporters don’t understand is that it was the Party powerbrokers that allowed Obama in the race in the first place. Are we to believe that the Democrats are so disordered that a freshman Senator from Illinois and black at that could get into this race without their allowing it at best and requesting it at worse? Hillary was always considered damaged goods by the insiders and the ease at which Obama was able to raise money and support is proof of that. Obama has been able to raise enormous amounts of money from small contributors but also from the establishment types as well. Hillary thinks that if she can make it to the convention she can engineer a coup, the truth is that those delegates she is counting on were the ones who engineer the Obama uprising in the first place.

I fully expect for Hillary to suspend her campaign by this weekend. If she doesn’t then she will have lost whatever dignity this campaign has afforded her. The fall-out will plague the Democrats well beyond this election cycle and into the future. If the Democrats lose the youth that Obama has been able to motivate due to backroom deals it will plague them for a generation. Is the ego of any candidate worth that?

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[1] http://blog.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/05/07/by_dan_balz_hillary_clinton.html?hpid=topnews