Letters to the Editor
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When Will it be Enough, Hillary?
When you've wrung every lost possible dime from your dwindling list of donors? When you've insulted every demographic of reliably democratic voters who fail to support you?
Unfortunately, I think Hillary won't be happy until she can (attempt to) undermine Obama thoroughly as a candidate. It won't matter that he has already won the nomination, what matters is that he is greatly damaged by the protracted campaign. That way she can revive her campaign in 2012 as savior of the Democratic Party.
If Hillary Clinton was a truly "stand-up" kind of person, she'd bow out. She can't win and the constant altering of reality to suit her needs does not really help her. OTOH, the media has proven remarkably compliant and gullible to these altered states of reality and might be counted on to continue the fiction a little longer. I really hope not.
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It's all about the Debt Now
Clinton will stay in the race longer if only to try to hit up her supporters for more donations in order to pay herself back. Pundits last night were suggesting that Clinton is likely in negotiations with Obama to have his campaign cover her debt as a condition of her concession to him. With the lastest numbers coming out about how deeply in debt her campaign is to vendors and supporters it looks grim.
People always claim that it was only Clinton's decision to decide when it was over as if no one else in the world had any stake in her choice to continue to battle for the nomination in the face of impossible odds. Now it looks quite likely that she will either continue to hit up her mostly cash strapped supporters for money to pay herself back by continuing to create the illusion that she has any chance to prevail or by demanding that Obama supporter's money cover her bad bet.
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For Hillary and her supporters the Question is
Do we need another Ralph Nader in this race?
The bottom had fallen out of this candidacy, and its continuation is not going to prove anything.
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Clinton can't win 10% of the votes
Obama can't win the other 90%. Yet the main story is about how Clinton has a problem with blacks. The assumption seems to be that white people are open-minded enough to support Obama in the general even if they supported Clinton in the primary, but black people aren't. Kind of insulting, isn't it?
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@dfield
Clinton doesn't need to pay herself back. She and Bill are worth more than 10 times what she had "loaned" the campaign, and he can earn the money back in a year or two of speeches.
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Just don't stomp on her grave people
This race has really gotten out of hand in the blogsphere and people are really not acting like human beings anymore. It's really unfortunate but we are all on the same side here. Lets not make this place look like a Youtube comment section after last night.
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@AlecsMom
"Stand up" politicans do not abandon their supporter's when 50% of them voted for their candidate of choice. They fight until the end. You should be admiring Clinton for her tenacity and pointing out that this shows that Democrats are every bit as willing to fight for what they believe as Republicans. Instead you are undermining the party spinning prominent Dem's as greedy and corrupt. If anybody has damaged this party during the primaries, it is not Clinton, but Obama and his supporter's who have divided the party and insulted their "opponents", who are (or, in many cases "were") members of the Democratic Party instead of Republicans.
This should end at the convention, when the delegates make their choice. In spite of what Obama says, vote's matter, and dismissing the choice of half of the Democratic Party is not a good way of "healing" the wounds of the primary.
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From End of April
I'm posting a blog I wrote after Pennsylvania that I feel might be salient...
Jeez. Look at it this way: if the primaries had been conducted all at the same time Clinton would have won the states she won (and probably more) and Obama would have carried the states he carried. But instead it's protracted, so everybody can pretend it's a horse race. Just like when he "lurched ahead" after winning South Carolina, Missouri and Wisconsin. He was always going to win South Carolina, Missouri and Wisconsin! Then Clinton carried Ohio and Texas (the primary-not the little mentioned caucus, which Obama won), and people acted like there was new life breathed into her campaign. She was always going to win Ohio and Texas!
Now she was supposed to win Pennsylvania (though by a larger margin) and she did, so everybody's asking why Obama can't deliver the knockout blow. In a couple of weeks he'll win North Carolina and everybody will be like "he's BAACK," and the shrill calls for Clinton to exit the race will resume. Only one state in this entire thing was an upset: Iowa.
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Increasingly this contest looks demographic. Not one demographic upset has occurred since Wisconsin. Hence I agree with the reader who predicted Hillary would win West Virginia and Obama Oregon. Watch for the "comeback kid" narrative again after West Virginia and Kentucky. Mark my words...
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@ jebldmm
Clinton can't win 10% of the votes. Obama can't win the other 90%. Yet the main story is about how Clinton has a problem with blacks. The assumption seems to be that white people are open-minded enough to support Obama in the general even if they supported Clinton in the primary, but black people aren't. Kind of insulting, isn't it?
If Obama wins the nomination, it's because he earned the victory by winning the most delegates, the most contests, and the most popular votes. If Hillary wins the nomination, it's because she managed to persuade a few hundred party insiders to overthrow the will of the people. This isn't a question of black Americans being open-minded. This is a question of black Americans having no patience for someone who's trying to steal a victory that she can't win legitimately.
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She wins the contested state but is the loser?
So continuing with the bizarro logic of this campaign, Obama wins a primary he was supposed to win in a state that the democrats will not win in the general election while Hillary wins the state that was actually a toss up-going in and is also a toss up in the general but she is the loser?
Yes Obama does well in those states where the democratic vote is mostly african-american and progressives but seems lacking in any industrial or rust belt state except his home one. Reminds me of CT where Lamont won the Primary dominate by progressives but got toasted in the general where everyone else got to vote.