For the record, I don't believe Senator Clinton is under any obligation to leave the race because she is behind by a margin that would be difficult to overcome. I think our presidential nominating process would be well served by a system in which every state and territory had an actively contested primary or caucus.
But what are we to make of the conclusion to Ellen Malcolm's Saturday op-ed in The Washington Post?
Hillary Clinton certainly has the right to compete till the end. But I believe Hillary also has a responsibility to play the game to its conclusion. For the women of my generation who learned to find and channel their competitiveness, for the working women who never falter in the face of pressure, for the younger women who still believe women can do anything, Hillary is a champion. She's shown us over and over that winners never quit and that quitters never win. We'll cheer her on until the game is over. And we hope that when the final whistle blows, we will have elected the first female president and the best president our country has ever had.
Senator Clinton, like all other candidates for a party's nomination, has some responsibilities beyond those suggested by Ms. Malcolm:
- To not drag her opponent through the mud in the process of competing till the end.
- To not play "let's make a deal" with the superdelegates as a means of circumventing the more democratic aspect of the nominating process.
- To not opportunistically pressure the DNC to change the rules for seating the delegates from Michigan and Florida as if those were real contests.
If Senator Clinton were to abide by these responsibilities, I would be pleased to see her continue in the race. She isn't. That's what makes her continuation something of a spectacle and Ms. Malcolm's editorial delusional.
But it's not the most delusional thing you can read about Senator Clinton's continuation in the race. That honor belongs to June Krunholz in today's Wall Street Journal. The problem with the article, in a nutshell, is here:
But what is clear from 1976 and two more-recent races is that the party took a drubbing when challengers refused to concede and instead pursued the nomination into the convention.
No, what is clear from those years is that when the personal and political characteristics of a party's standard-bearer are out of step with much of the electorate, the party will lose in November and will have a hard time settling its own nomination earlier in the year.
The 1976, 1980, and 1984 contests in the article are not good examples for the Democratic Party this year. With former Vice President Gore not in the race, the Party is without a standard-bearer, and neither Senator Clinton nor Senator Obama appear to be out of step with most of the electorate.
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Clinton is wrong on role of superdelegates
If Clinton believes, as she must, that she has no realistic chance of winning more PLEDGED delegates than Obama, she should not continue to seek the nomination.
She and her supporters argue that the superdelegates exist to exercise independent judgment, rather than just to rubber stamp whoever leads in pledged delegates, but that view is misleading and mostly invalid with regard to this year's nomination.
Based on the history of their creation, the superdelegates were created for two reasons: (1) to put a candidate with more pledged delegates and/or a high degree of likelihood of finishing with the most pledged delegates over the top (or the prohibitive favorite) to avoid a long, drawn-out, divisive and damaging continuation of the primary fight (i.e., to avoid another Ted Kennedy in 1980, as they did by nixing Gary Hart in 1984), and (2) to overturn the pledged delegate leader in exceptional circumstances if he is clearly highly unelectable (e.g., McGovern) and/or way out of the mainstream of the party (assuming those who voted in primaries & caucuses were not representative of party members as a whole).
Neither of the above conditions apply today (at least not in Hillary's favor*), so it would not be legitimate for the superdelegates to overturn Obama's pledged delegate lead and give the nomination to Hillary. Doing so would be wrong as a matter of principle, in addition to being disastrous for the party, causing it to lose support from many African-Americans and young voters, many of whom would sit out this general election and probably a couple more.
* We are, however, at the point at which it is at least arguable that condition #1 applies in OBAMA's favor, and that the superdelegates should put him over the top now.
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