Senator Clinton? It's Time to Go.

I am a huge fan of Bill Clinton. Even though he was never quite liberal enough for me and even though he was a bit manipulative and cynical for my tastes and even though he squandered so many opportunities by indulging in his taste for zaftig women, I have always admired the man. I was born during the Johnson administration and I am not sure I have seen a better politician in my life than Bubba. And I have long admired his wife; I believe she has massive strength to go through the Republican’s treatment if her and the complicity of the mainstream media in those attacks. While she was not my first choice for President, had she been the nominee, I would have supported her without hesitation. I would have sent her money, I would have worked for her and I would have done anything else I could have to see that she won t he presidency. Unlike a lot of people I didn’t begrudge her staying in the race even as it became less and less likely that she could ever secure the nomination. While I would have preferred that she get out awhile ago and allowed the campaign against John McCain to proceed, it was her right to stay in and it was also good for all the states that held their contests later in the cycle to finally have a say in choosing the nominee.

But yesterday’s results in North Carolina and Indiana have changed all of that. It is time for Senator Clinton, for the sake of her party and the sake of her legacy, to drop out of this race. I know this will be difficult for her. Less than one year ago she was all but the presumptive nominee and the primary season was a conclusion that had been reached and merely had to be played out. She has already lived in the White House and she knows all the good she could do as President. I get it. But she still has to quit.

She has been reduced to relying on ever more outlandish schemes to keep alive her hopes of getting the nomination. A couple of weeks ago it was all about her momentum and the fact that Obama had never won an actual primary election in a large state; all he had won were caucuses as if the opinions of people in Texas mattered less. Then it was all about who could reach the blue-collar workers better and just wait until we show that he cannot connect with rank-and-file Joe Sixpack –type voters.

And lately she has been employing her weakest but still most potentially divisive attack yet: She is arguing that the Florida and Michigan delegations should be seated exactly as they have been allotted. I find this argument to be repugnant. Michigan and Florida knew full well that they were jumping the queue and t hat they would be penalized if they held their contests before their sanctioned time and they did it anyway. And all the candidates agreed with them being penalized, Sen. Clinton too. Her name was the only one even on the ballot in Michigan and she and Sen. Obama both agreed to not campaign there or in Florida. And Sen. Clinton won both of those contests back when she was an even stronger candidate. Now she wants those results upheld because of the principal issue of “fairness” as she sees it. This is ridiculous; to allow the seating of those delegates would undermine the process that all the candidates agreed to before the primary season even started and it would encourage future states to jump ahead of their “turn” without fear of repercussion.

The fact that Clinton is willing to place her own desire to be President ahead of what is good for the party. The kind of credentials battle and floor fight she is proposing would be devastating and would stall any campaign Obama wanted to get going. As long as Clinton was able to draw breath, well, I don’t like it but I could understand and accept it. But the game has now changed: She is out of money, she got creamed in North Carolina and barely won (assuming she did at all) in Indiana, a state she more or less admitted she needed to win to continue. Now, while she did win it, her margin was paper thin and significantly undercuts her ability to argue that she has demonstrated that Obama can’t win in the Midwest or with the white middle class. Certainly she won the white vote but it is naïve to accept that people who voted for Clinton will refuse to vote for Obama. Yes, there will be some soreheads out there who will refuse to get behind Obama for one reason or another, but I believe that most Democrats will come home for the election, especially after the campaign against John McCain begins in earnest.

It appears, to her credit, that Senator Clinton knows she is beaten. She loaned her campaign $6.4MM between mid-April and May 5th but if she is that low on money it means that donors are leaving her and she can’t continue. At some point it becomes a case of good money after bad. She canceled her morning media appearances today and she may be thinking of her exit strategy. Her “victory” speech and email sounded, as Keith Olberman said, “austere” and it certainly seems like she knows the end is nigh.

When you add it all together, this campaign has become untenable. It is a house of cards suddenly built on a tower in a high wing on a fault line. She is relying increasingly on kooky theories as to how she can get enough delegates and those theories all seem to involve seating the full contingents of Michigan and Florida and convincing superdelegates that she is still deserving of their support. She has not money except her own.

It’s time for Senator Clinton to do the honorable thing and step aside and help her party take back the White House before she does real damage.