The growing chorus isn’t exactly subtle: Hillary Clinton, loser of 11 consecutive contests, is now expected to bow out and allow us to all shift into general election mode. For much of the political world, the race for the Democratic nomination is effectively over, and Clinton isn’t doing anyone any favors, least of all herself, but dragging this out.
Instinctively, I still find all of this premature, but the wave is certainly hard to ignore. Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter has seen enough:
If Hillary Clinton wanted a graceful exit, she’d drop out now — before the March 4 Texas and Ohio primaries — and endorse Barack Obama…. Withdrawing would be stupid if Hillary had a reasonable chance to win the nomination, but she doesn’t. To win, she would have to do more than reverse the tide in Texas and Ohio, where polls show Obama already even or closing fast. She would have to hold off his surge, then establish her own powerful momentum within three or four days. Without a victory of 20 points or more in both states, the delegate math is forbidding. In Pennsylvania, which votes on April 22, the Clinton campaign did not even file full delegate slates. That’s how sure they were of putting Obama away on Super Tuesday. […]
The pundit class hasn’t been quicker to point all this out because of what happened in New Hampshire. A lot of us looked foolish by all but writing Hillary off when she lost the Iowa caucuses. As we should have known, stuff happens in politics. But that was early. The stuff that would have to happen now would be on a different order of magnitude. It’s time to stop overlearning the lesson of New Hampshire.
Hillary has only one shot — for Obama to trip up so badly that he disqualifies himself. Nothing in the last 14 months suggests he will.
This came the same day Bob Novak wrote, “[W]ise old heads in the Democratic Party [are] asking this question: Who will tell her that it’s over, that she cannot win the presidential nomination and that the sooner she leaves the race, the more it will improve the party’s chances of defeating Sen. John McCain in November?”
And yet, I still find myself thinking, “Not so fast.”
I think John Cole’s take sounds perfectly reasonable:
Why should she get out now? She has spent years preparing for this run, has millions of supporters who want her to continue, she still has a shot (albeit a small one, I think) at winning, and I think she owes it to herself and those who have sacrificed so much to get her this close to continue on. Should she lose the next few states and really start to trail badly in delegates, I think she should probably get out, but it should be on her own terms. Trying to pressure her out right now doesn’t sit right with me, though. What is so bad about letting the voters have their say?
To be sure, a lot of voters in most of the country already have had their say, but the margin is not so one-sided that the outcome is obvious. Hillary Clinton is not, for example, Mike Huckabee, clinging to nothing.
Marc Ambinder, noting that there’s a bandwagon for folks who still think Clinton can win, considers jumping on, but hesitates.
It is very difficult, from the standpoint of politics, of delegate mathematics, and of the news media, to envision a scenario where Hillary Clinton not only recovers her momentum but actually finds a way to obtain a delegate lead — just about the only way she can possibly convince the party that she deserves time to make her case for the nomination. […]
The Clinton campaign has been accused of moving the goal posts every time they fail to reach a previously promised threshold, but the goal posts, right now, are at the back of the stadium. They can’t be moved any further back without bringing the whole thing down. It’s unlikely that the news media, more pro-Obama than anti-Hillary, would give any credence to another attempt to push the contest into April. And, come to think it, there’s no energy left on the Clinton campaign to do, either.
Advisers figure that a loss in Texas is as likely as a win in Ohio; a large number of staffers appear to be willing to quit en masse next Wednesday if there’s a split decision and Clinton gives notice that she intends to fight for another month.
I don’t really have a point here, other than to say that Clinton really does have a week to fundamentally change this race. One could make an argument that Clinton still has a legitimate shot, but it’s getting increasingly less plausible every day.
Alter’s request that she drop out now seems far-fetched, but Texas and Ohio are seven days away, and they appear to be getting more and more Obama-friendly all the time. My inclination is to argue that all this “withdraw now” talk is premature — but only a little.