No Really, You Should Go: Wretched Rationalizations for Hillary Clinton's Kamikaze Campaign

[flpoljunkie]

No Really, You Should Go

Wretched rationalizations for Hillary Clinton's kamikaze campaign.

Jonathan Chait, The New Republic Published: Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Last week, Senator Pat Leahy suggested that Hillary Clinton ought to quit the presidential race. How insensitive! How boorish! Pundits gasped, Clinton took umbrage, and even Barack Obama was forced to concede that Clinton has the right to run for as long as she desires.

The persistent weakness of American liberalism is its fixation with rights and procedures at any cost to efficiency and common sense. Democrats' reluctance to push Clinton out of the race is the perfect expression of that delicate sensibility.

There is some point at which a candidate's chance of winning becomes so low that her right to continue is outweighed by the party's interest in preparing for the general election. Does Clinton have a chance to become president? Sure. So does Ralph Nader. Clinton's chances are far closer to Nader's than to either Obama's or John McCain's.

Almost nobody contends that Clinton has a chance to overcome Obama's lead in pledged delegates. The spin now is that Obama's delegate lead is "small but almost insurmountable" (USA Today) and that, since neither can clinch the nomination with pledged delegates alone, "the nomination is expected to be in the superdelegates' hands" (Los Angeles Times). These beliefs reflect the mathematical illiteracy that has allowed the press corps to be routinely duped by economic flim-flammery. A lead that's insurmountable is, by definition, not small. The very primary rules that make it impossible for Clinton to catch up--proportionate distribution of delegates that award tiny net sums to the winner--are exactly what made Obama's lead so impressive.

The notion that the superdelegates will decide the race implies that pledged delegates won't matter--like a sports event that goes to overtime. Obviously, though, the pledged-delegate count determines how many superdelegates each candidate needs. Depending on how the remaining primaries go, Clinton will need about two-thirds of the uncommitted ones to break her way. Problem is, over the last month, superdelegates have broken to Obama by 78 percent to 22 percent.

more...

http://www.tnr.com/story_print.html?id=6b3d9c26-7c9e-4814-badd-a124edc68718

[Uben]

1. Dupe

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x350958

[JimGinPA]

2. She Needs To Go After The PA Primary

That way I can say my vote was the final straw.

K&R

[DaveT]

3. kick and recommend

I'm not a big fan of Chait -- and I don't believe in whining in politics, so I don't think Obama supporters should waste much energy hoping (or posting the hope on the internet) that HRC will drop out.

Nevertheless, Chait's argument in this article is extremely persuasive. I especially appreciated his analogy to Nader supporters who regard the Presidential Election as an exercise in self-definition rather than an objective process for choosing a Chief Executive. I have even heard people argue with a straight face that "the Dems should be able to win even without the votes of Nader supporters -- and if they can't, it only shows how much they suck."

I doubt that Rodham Clinton will drop out before the Convention and Obama and his supporters need to get used to the likelihood of a last ditch fight at the Credentials Committee. It would be better not to have to go through all that, but that is out of our hands.

The worst thing is for us to be ones enabling the theory that we can't win unless Rodham Clinton cooperates. Of course we can win -- it will be harder, but that's the way the cookie crumbles sometimes.