Memo to Hillary: Enough already
Hillary Clinton has a run a good, hard race and now she needs to pack it in.
But she remains not only uninterested in the facts, which show her with absolutely no chance to win the Democratic presidential nomination, she is downright defiant, in her words and her deeds -- and apparently determined to take the rest of her party down with her as the Good Ship Clinton slips into the abyss.
Even a former Reagan speechwriter, Peggy Noonan, can see that.
"The Democratic Party can't celebrate the triumph of Barack Obama because the Democratic Party is busy having a breakdown," Noonan writes today in The Wall Street Journal.
"You could call it a breakdown over the issues of race and gender, but its real source is simply Hillary Clinton. Whose entire campaign at this point is about exploiting race and gender."
Noonan cited Hillary's desperation ploy to use race as a wedge issue to salvage her candidacy, most recently her USA Today interview.
Clinton said in part, reports USA Today: "I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on." She then cited an Associated Press article "that found how Sen. Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me."
"There's a pattern emerging here," she added.
Noonan's response:
"White Americans? Hard-working white Americans? 'Even Richard Nixon didn't say white,' an Obama supporter said, 'even with the Southern strategy.'
"If John McCain said, 'I got the white vote, baby!' his candidacy would be over. And rising in highest indignation against him would be the old Democratic Party.
"To play the race card as Mrs. Clinton has, to highlight and encourage a sense that we are crudely divided as a nation, to make your argument a brute and cynical 'the black guy can't win but the white girl can' is -- well, so vulgar, so cynical, so cold, that once again a Clinton is making us turn off the television in case the children walk by."
Indeed. Clinton has had her chance. She has moved the goal post in her bid for the nomination several times. Her Hail Mary pass, it appears, is her whiteness.
As for how the most loyal bloc of Democratic voters, African Americans, must be feeling right now, I agree with The Washington Psot's Eugene Robinson.
Robinson writes: "As a rationale for why Democratic Party superdelegates should pick her over Obama, it's a slap in the face to the party's most loyal constituency -- African Americans -- and a repudiation of principles the party claims to stand for. Here's what she's really saying to party leaders: There's no way that white people are going to vote for the black guy. Come November, you'll be sorry.
"How silly of me. I thought the Democratic Party believed in a colorblind America."
Clinton defends her comments by saying they merely state the obvious.
"These are the people you have to win if you're a Democrat in sufficient numbers to actually win the election," she said. "Everybody knows that."
And she knows that her choice of words seems calculated to divide and conquer.
Only there is no conquest to be had. Not for her at this point.
"This nomination fight is over," says ABC's George Stephanopoulos, a former member of the Bill Clinton administration.
Obama has overtaken her in superdelegates.
Obama has won the most pledged delegates.
He leads in the popular vote.
But Clinton soldiers on. Now, apparently, Obama isn't white enough in her book.
The Clintons traditionally have occupied a special place among African Americans. That's in jeopardy now, if not totally eroded already.
She is hardly endearing herself to to the Democratic Party at large right now, either.
What can she be hoping for?
That the Rev. Jeremiah Wright will say something else?
That Obama will be revealed to be as space alien?
That a lost cache of uncommitted superdelegates will be uncovered in Al Capone's vault?
Hillary is like a basketball team that's 20 points down with 15 seconds left but still keeps calling timeouts.
Give it up, Hillary
Let the clock run out.
Obama has won by the rules. Let him win or lose in November on the merits of his message and his campaign.
Comments (8)
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Adjust your binoculars, Mr. Johnson. You're gazing at the wrong goal post. You need to be looking longer range ... about four years longer range.
Senator Clinton is no longer running to be the Democratic Party nominee in 2008. That went by the board some time ago.
At this point, her objective is to inflict sufficient damage on Senator Obama to cause him to lose to Senator McCain in the general election.
If Obama wins in November, she'll be out of it. But if McCain wins, she can claim, "See? I told ya that only I could take our party to the Holy Grail of American politics." Then she set about getting the 2012 nomination.
Posted on May 9, 2008 3:31 PM
Noonan's right about several things, not the least of which is that any Republican even approaching Clinton's race rhetoric would be run out of the country on a rail.
It amuses me that Clintonian tactics are now outraging the liberal set as well. Welcome to the club.
Posted on May 10, 2008 2:57 AM
Another double standard (as noted by the caption):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpGH02DtIws&eurl=http://marcambinder.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/05/from_the_if_mccain_did_this_fi.php
Posted on May 10, 2008 3:00 AM
Keep up the good work Ms. Clinton, I just love to hear liberals like Allen Johnson whining. Of course you would be the front runner if you had come up with Hussein great energy plan, tax the oil companies and give the money to people who refuse to work. Seems this has not got a lot of print in the liberal media. Much like the liberals 2006 plan, vote for a liberal congress and we will provide cheap gas. After the lie the liberal press, goes into hiding.
Tax the oil companies ? Wonder where they get their money? Could that be us a the pump?
Posted on May 10, 2008 6:17 AM
So, is that to imply that Hillary Clinton is a conservative?
Posted on May 10, 2008 10:50 AM
I suspect that a case might be made that Senator Clinton is RELATIVELY more conservative than Senator Obama, at least on a few issues. But to question whether there is an implication that she is "a conservative" would be tantamount to asking if Hitler was "a benign prince" since his atrocities pale in comparison to Stalin's; or if Attila the Hun was "a sweet guy" since his rampages were mild compared to Ghengis Kahn's.
The delight being expressed probably derives from seeing the philosophy of liberalism in general, and the Democratic Party in particular, have it's true nature exposed to the light of day. Rather than being the all-inclusive, peace loving, warm and caring party that it tries to project, it is being shown to be a coldly calculating, divisive and power-driven conglomeration.
So, naturally, there's to be considerable whining amongst liberalism's proponents in an effort to limit this exposition.
Posted on May 11, 2008 9:04 AM
Correct me if I'm wrong, Doug, but isn't it Hillary Clinton who attached "a windfall profits tax" for the oil companies to her ill-considered gas tax holiday plan?
Posted on May 12, 2008 8:55 AM
Why is suspension of the federal gas tax ill-considered, when it should be abolished all together? The federal gas tax is noting more than a Congressional slush fund. It was implemented in 1958 to facilitate the completion of the Interstate Highway system, which was finished in the early 1990's. the project was finished, but like all taxes, the gas tax lived on. Responsibility for roads belongs to the states. Let them deal with their responsibilities. The feds do not need to add to the pain at the pump. Let's facr it, politicians never met a tax that they didn't like.
No, Hillary is not a conservative by any means. She is a political opportunist, who would become a fascist or communist if it would meet her political needs to become POTUS.
Posted on May 12, 2008 9:47 AM