May 11 2008
Hillary should stay in
Cyrus had this to say in a comment to an earlier post:
I think it’s important that, at this point, Hillary waits until after the West Virginia and Kentucky primaries to bow out, because it would be a bit of a psychological blow to the Democrats, as a party, to have the nominee lose the next two primaries.
Don Frederick and Andrew Malcom of The Los Angeles Times agree with him:
A quick Clinton exit wouldn’t help Obama
“The Democratic race now moves to West Virginia,” Jay Leno noted the other night. “Today, Hillary Clinton claimed she always wanted to be a coal miner. But those dreams were dashed when she was forced to attend Wellesley and Yale.”
The political focus now does, indeed, shift to the Mountain State for its primary on Tuesday. And then Kentucky and Oregon and Puerto Rico, down to the very end in Montana and South Dakota on June 3.
Times political writer Mark Z. Barabak had an interesting conversation with Tad Devine, a Democratic strategist not involved with a candidate this time. Counterintuitively, the way he sees the inevitable delegate math in favor of Barack Obama, the worst thing that could happen to the Illinois senator now is what so many party members are clamoring for: Hillary Rodham Clinton to drop out.
Why?
Because with her name still on the ballots, she’d be very likely to win in West Virginia anyway. And maybe Kentucky too, given the demographics in both places. And possibly Puerto Rico as well.
How would that look if at the end of the Democratic race the winning candidate with clearly the most delegates and popular votes went down to defeat against a candidate who isn’t in the contest anymore? Ouch! That would tend to overshadow his expected wins in Oregon and Montana.
In fact, although little noticed because the Republican race had long been over, Sen. John McCain won his Pennsylvania primary with 73% of the vote. Put another way, the surefire Republican nominee lost about 27% of his party’s vote to a candidate who had long since dropped out (former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee) and a Republican rebel who never really had any chance of winning (Texas Rep. Ron Paul).
“If [Obama] lost to a candidate who’s withdrawn, that would hurt him a lot,” says Devine. “And there’s a good chance that could happen.”
Better for Obama, he figures, for the former first lady to remain in the race a few more weeks, as long as she recalibrates her rhetorical cannons at McCain and President Bush.
There is little to no doubt that Hillary Clinton will win the Democratic primaries in West Virginia and Kentucky. (See previous post.) She will likely win them with fairly large margins. For that reason, it probably is a good idea for her to keep her campaign active for another nine days. The problem is that she appears to sincerely believe that she can still win the nomination. She continues to attack Barack Obama. She is not “recalibrating her rhetorical cannons at McCain and President Bush.”
Witness her campaign chairman Terry McAuliffe on NBC’s Meet the Press this morning. Keep in mind as you watch this that this is the man who, should Hillary Clinton win the presidency, will likely be her Chief of Staff.
Do you see any indication in that clip that the Clinton campaign is ready to concede the nomination to Barack Obama? At some point, reality has to set in. Right now, the only thing she and her supporters are accomplishing is a deepening of the rift in the Democratic party. They are only making it more difficult for Senator Obama to reunite the party, which he will definitely need to do in order to save our country from another four years (minimum) of disastrous Republican rule.
I will continue to stand by my prediction that Barack Obama will clinch the nomination after the Oregon primary on May 20. For the good of our party and our country, Hillary Clinton must graciously step aside at that time and do whatever she can to convince her supporters to rally behind the party’s nominee.
We must defeat John McCain and the Republicans in November. We have no other option.
