I am a strong Obama supporter. Granted, I was once, last summer, a soft supporter, although still strong enough to give $250 at that time. But I've given $500 total at this point to the Obama campaign, a significant sum for me even if it came in mostly much smaller increments. I voted for Obama in the February 12 D.C. primary. I would have been there for the D.C. pre-primary caucus in January but for a wife who then was nearly 9 months pregnant and a house we were hurriedly getting ready to put on the market for sale. It broke my heart, but I had to skip the caucus that day.
And for all that, I would be ready to demand, sadly, that Obama drop out, if only...... (more below the jump)
Markos and many others eloquently have written here how Obama is the clear frontrunner by any and every metric. He has more earned and total delegates. He has more total national popular votes. He has won more primary states and more caucus states. And only a shocking, completely unpredictable implosion can keep him from maintaining all those advantages through the remaining few states and Puerto Rico.
But what if the roles were exactly reversed? What if Hillary had the advantage in those metrics with the exact same numbers and narrow margins? Would I really say Obama should step down now? Should we all in the Obama camp?
Yes, I would.
And yes, we should.
I have no doubt that a nontrivial proportion of my fellow Obama supporters wouldn't. I have no doubt some would demand he fight on right through the convention. That Hillary must be stopped no matter what to stop the DLC and triangulation, or more generally the old ways of insider D.C. politics, or both, all as a matter of principle and for the future of our country. That the fact she has earned only a narrow advantage demonstrates her great weakness even among Democrats and suggests fatal weakness with the far less friendly general electorate. That Obama still can win, even if it requires a convention fight.
But they would be wrong.
If Obama were the narrow trailer instead of the narrow leader right now, with almost no chance of making up the difference among voters or earned delegates in the remaining contests, his continued fight would severely risk damaging the Democratic Party this November. We have to win this November, and Hillary, for whatever warts she has, is far superior to McCain or any other Rethug. Eight years of Hillary Clinton would be a breath of fresh air compared to Dubya's 8 years. She would, if elected, bring the country together enough to govern effectively by the mere fact of having won the general election. And, in contrast, 4 years of McCain would only further damage America. Obama fighting on would only assure McCain's victory, given Hillary's polarizing persona as it is. It would be critical for our party, for November, for Obama to end it now so that we can begin healing as soon as possible and rally together, just as the Rethugs are doing now with McCain. All the arguments for Obama to fight on are just so much denial, so much sour grapes a refusal to accept the will of the people or to respect the nomination process about which no one complained before the contests were already underway and someone started winning while others were losing.
So it goes that, happily, that the above hypothetical is mere fiction. Obama is not the narrow trailer, but instead the narrow leader. And for almost all the same reasons in the preceding paragraph, Hillary has a duty as a Democrat to drop out now. Granted, Obama is better-liked and less polarizing than Hillary, more of a blank canvass with the general electorate so that he has the opportunity to self-define without, as happens with Hillary, presumptively losing close to half the voters before they give our nominee a look. Obama can, far better than Hillary in the hypothetical above, survive an extended fight and still win in November. But make no mistake, it will be harder than it would be otherwise. And Hillary's outsized ego and arrogance are to blame.
This is the time when we learn who is a Democrat and who is just a self-absorbed individual. Hillary is proving to be the latter. And to the detriment of her party and country.
Hillary, step down now.