The simple fact is that Hillary's ego is the only thing keeping her in the race at this point. She is willing to drag Obama and the Democratic Party down with her if she can't be the nominee. Dropping the racist campaign strategy she has employed so far would be a decent thing to do, but the right thing to do is walk away with some dignity.

Staying in the race makes a "thermonuclear climax" all but impossible to avoid. Hillary is only in the race now in the hopes that she does well enough in the remaining primaries to get the superdelegates to ignore that Obama won more states, more votes, more delegates and just hand it to her under the table. That is her ONLY hope. And, if it were to happen, "thermonuclear" would be a good term to describe the result. If a bunch of rich white people yank the nomination from the black man who won the race among the voters, there will be blood in the streets. Literally. The racial issues that simmer under the surface today will explode if white elites are seen to have "stolen" the nomination from a black man.

Thermonuclear, indeed.

(Please note that I do not feel that violence would have occurred simply because Obama lost. My argument is predicated on a situation where there is a perception that the race was stolen. With Obama having won the race with the voters, Such a perception is the inevitable result of any feasible scenario where Hillary gets the nomination.)

Outrageous article.

"IF the rules were different, we would have won." *sniff* *sniff*

That sums the article up. It is speculative at best, as, if the rules were different, the campaigns would have been different as well, so any speculation about what the outcome "would have been" is guesswork or just plain old daydreaming.

And the charge that Obama doesn't want votes counted is just childish.

* Florida and Michigan knew what they were doing when they set their dates. They figured the nominee would be decided early as usual and they would get seated and in 2012, they would have their early primaries hassle free. Once they saw that the race was going to be close, they wanted to change the rules and they wanted to make the Democratic Party pay for it. How ironic that if they had followed the rules to begin with, their primaries would have been far more important than if the early primaries had been allowed to count.

* The votes in Florida and Michigan can't count because they were not real elections. Voters in both states knew that their votes didn't count, so the results are inevitably skewed. To argue that Hillary should get her votes/delegates from Florida violates our basic democratic principles by arguing to change the rules mid-election. To argue that the Michigan delgates should be seated is beyond idiotic. I am not trying to be harsh, but there is no other way to describe it. She was the only major candidate too sleazy to take her name off the ballot in Michigan. She basically ran unopposed in Michigan and 40% of the Democratic Primary participants showed up JUST to vote against her. The argument that the Michigan delegates should be seated is illogical, unintelligent and laughably biased.

Salon, you can play your little what if games to your heart's content, but back in the reality-based community, Obama has won under the rules that existed at the start of all of this. Hillary can't win without splintering the Democratic Party and creating a truly dangerous situation in our country. Urge your candidate to curb her ego and step aside. Face the reality of the situation and stop trying to justify Hillary's overinflated ego and sense of entitlement. Console yourselves with meaningless patter like this AFTER you have convinced your candidate to put the needs of the party and the nation before her own lust for power.

Right now, the reality-based community needs the old Salon back.

In my letter above, it should say "to sleazy to not take her name off the ballot."

Bad proofreading. My apologies.

This sums up exactly what I thought when I read the fantasy piece yesterday. How did it get past Walsh and posted at Salon?

Salon is an embarrassment now. Check out the Editor's Choice letters on the laughably bad article that this article is tearing apart like the wet TP that it was. Almost all of them are letters supporting the what-if sob story that was the Wilentz article.

Salon is a joke. The time has come for Ms Walsh to go, or for Salon to go. She has driven a great publication into the ground as surely as Bush has driven our once great nation into the ground. Salon is now the biased joke that conservatives always accused it of being.