Bloggers are talking about little else besides Tuesday’s primaries.
Hill Street blues: A double-digit loss in North Carolina, coupled with a squeaker of a victory in Indiana, makes it all but impossible for Hillary Clinton to get the Democratic nomination, even as she vows to fight on. Most bloggers think she’s joined the choir invisible.
Game over, according to conservative Michelle Malkin: “She gave it her all, found her voice, lost her voice, smiled through her lies, lied through her cries, schemed, clawed, and cackled. But alas, it was not enough.” Richelieu at the Weekly Standard’s Blog predicts: “I think she’s out in a week or less.” And not a moment too soon, for theAtlantic’s Megan McArdle,who is glad Clinton’s pandering has failed: “Hillary is here with a plan,” McArdle writes. “Specifically, a plan to discourage investment in the oil industry through a windfall profits tax, and to destroy the mortgage market by freezing foreclosures and interest rates. That way, no one has to worry about oil or houses, because there won’t be any to worry about. That’s just the kind of thoughtful, caring politician she is.”
What did Clinton gain by hanging in there for the past two months? “Primarily, she managed to graft Bill Clinton’s reputation as the indefatigable fighter who can always come back from the dead onto herself,” writesDaniel Drezner. “There’s also the working class hero thing, though I suspect that will fade. Finally, she’s managed the rare reverse Greenhouse Effect, earning Strange New Respect from Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, and Patrick Buchanan.”
Ron Chusid at Liberal Values hypothesizes: “At this point she might remain in the race a little longer only to attempt to raise a little money to offset her debts, or perhaps to make a deal with Obama to assume her campaign debts.” Hot Air’s conservative Allahpundit thinks “she has nothing left to commend her to the supers except an electabilty argument unsupported by a single key metric or even circumstantial evidence that Pastorgate has done Obama grievous damage at the polls. Are they going to take the nomination from the first serious black candidate for president without any compelling data to hang their decision on? Not a chance. It’s over. Let’s move on.”
Andrew Sullivan calls Clinton a sociopath, runs mail from a reader comparing Clinton to a drunken co-ed, and discusses the significance of her self-financing her campaign. So, how happy is he Obama came out on top? “After the last month of unremitting Freak Show attacks, that’s a remarkable show of strength and resilience. Obama’s delegate lead grows. He will have the majority of the popular vote. He has far more money and far more donors. The logic of Clinton’s remaining in the race dwindles to the point of vanishing altogether.”
In the analogy department, Kyle E. Moore at Comments From Left Field compares the Clinton campaign to the Iraq war, while Slate’s Emily Bazelon compares Democratic voters to King Solomon at XX Factor. And at Commentary’s Contentions, Jennifer Rubin compares Obama to an appliance: “Like a vacuum cleaner, he is sucking up the Clintonian message to blue collar voters and absorbing the rhetoric which has successfully lured a coalition of working class whites, seniors and women. Don’t expect any more Snobgate slip-ups.”
Hey, what about those delegates in limbo? History teacher Betsy Newmark at Betsy’s Page has advice for Obama: “As for Michigan and Florida, if I were the Obama team, I’d make a gracious concession to those states and let their votes count, even though it would give Hillary a bunch of popular votes and delegates. He’s still going to win and he could heal some of the wounds in those states.” Jerome Armstrong at liberal MyDD says: “On the allowing for the full seating of MI and FL, if Obama gets to the point where he has enough delegates to win the nomination despite MI & FL being seated, then ultimately, that would be the best route for Obama to go through, even though it seems unlikely.”
And James Joyner at Outside the Beltway prophecies: “We’ll be hearing murmurs from the Clinton camp for years to come about how this was stolen from her and that, if only Florida and Michigan had counted, it would have been hers. That’s doubly true if Obama loses to John McCain in November.”
Ready to throw the phrase thrown under the bus, um, under the bus? The new buzzword of the election season seems to be unity. Marc Ambinder writes: “Expect Obama in the next few days to prize unity above all else – and to turn his attention away from Clinton and towards the notion of a unified Democratic Party and the race against McCain. The Clinton campaign will limp to West Virginia with just enough energy and barely any money.” The Moderate Voice says: “If Clinton plays out her campaign based on issues and makes a graceful exit, the Democrats have a chance at unity. If her campaign remains an aggressive negative campaign, complete with eleventh hour negative campaign ads, it could backfire with some superdelegates and will make the Democrats’ attempts to unify their fractured party even more difficult — not to mention negate any possibility of a ‘Dream Ticket’ which more and more seems like an In Your Dreams Ticket.”
Read more about Hillary Clinton and the primaries. In Slate, John Dickerson says it’s all but over.
