Under the circumstances, I find it maddening that the party leadership isn't acting to push her out of the race. Dragging things out 'till the convention stands a much, much, much higher chance of hurting Barack Obama's chances in the general election than it does of securing Clinton the nomination. I understand the calculation from the point of view of the heart of the Clinton campaign -- McCain beating Obama in the general means the Clintons still control the party, so there's no need to worry about helping McCain and you might as well hold on and hope lightning strikes. But the broader mass of unaffiliated elites and Clinton supporters who aren't literally on her payroll are, in my view, acting in a massively irresponsible manner.
1) How can "dragging things out 'till the convention" hurt Obama? Is there any dirt that Hillary could find and use that McCain won't, and at a much more inconvenient time for Obama?
2) If the Clintons "control the party," why is there a race going on at all? Even if they couldn't just wave their all-powerful wands and win the primary by votes, they could use their "control of the party" to win the superdelegates at the convention.
3) One way or another, this is pretty much it for Clintonism. She would be 65 in 2012, isn't aging particularly well, and appearances count, particularly for women. Unlike the even older McCain, she doesn't have the entirety of the media establishment pumping her up.
The real thing that's going on here is the liberal blogosphere is pandering for the eyeballs of the Obamabots. Any mention of Obama gets hundreds of posts from the frothing morons of the left, these people know it, and that's how they drive their web hits and their careers. The establishment media panders to each other; the blogosphere panders to the people online -- semi-educated, middle class elites who only reflect a small section of the Dem base, but who are, for the Yglesiases of the world, everything. The "new medium" is already starting to fail. I don't know if this will change any as more common people get online, but right now it's depressing to see.
