Monday, March 24, 2008

Is it time for Hillary's "Goldwater moment?"

That's the thinking over at AmericaBlog (although they lost faith in HRC some time ago):

Any of the party leaders who are waiting to endorse until a later date should listen in on one of these conference calls. (Anne Marie Cox usually posts the audio at Swampland). Then, they need to ask themselves if they want two more months of this while John McCain just coasts along, saving his money and his reputation, when Hillary Clinton cannot win the nomination anyway. The Superdelegates and the DNC need to decide if they want two more months of the vitriol, and a divided, bitterly divided party, or do they want a Democratic White House come next January? It's time for some leadership -- or something more akin to an intervention. Otherwise, we're on a path to Mutually Assured Destruction. And so far, our party elders don't seem to care.

Three weeks ago--half a lifetime in primary years--my inclination was to let the Democratic primary process continue unresolved for a while longer. In large part that was because the continuing Obama/Clinton competition was keeping health care, Iraq, and jobs--issues I cared about--on the radar screen.

That's stopped happening. We just passed the 4000-mark in American military casualties in Iraq, and McCain isn't being called to account for his blind enthusiasm for the war. Same for the economy, which McCain says he may or may not understand, and health care, for which McCain has nothing more to offer than Bush does. McCain is now in violation of the campaign finance laws that bear his name, and no one is paying attention.

What did America spend the last week on? Obama's pastor. Credit to him for making some lemonade out of those lemons, but that's not the point.

No one is benefiting now from the extended duel between Hillary and Obama except McCain, and it's perfectly clear that the dung flinging is coming from the Clinton camp and its followers.

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