Tethered Swimming

The hand wringing and teeth gnashing that followed Hillary Clinton’s victory in Pennsylvania last week was as predictable as it was pointless. Take a look at the headlines (you don’t need to actually read the articles) from RealClearPolitics for the last couple of days (Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday). You’ll be treated to a vocabulary smorgasbord of “Dilemma”, “Low Road”, “Negative”, “Bitter” and the like. It’s enough to make you think it’s some kind of soap opera or fraudulent Zimbabwean election. But it’s all water under the bridge. Barack Obama will almost certainly be the nominee, he’ll be confirmed as such long before the convention, and Hillary Clinton will be a smiling and happy soldier raising money for Democratic candidates up and down the line.

Hillary Clinton isn’t stupid. She’s a stalwart Democrat and she badly wants that big blue airplane, but she isn’t a megalomaniac hell bent on acquiring the nomination at any cost. She can certainly seem that way, but she isn’t. I’ll change my tune on that if we’re still having this argument in the middle of June, but we won’t be. She is a practical and pragmatic person and will not risk her future in the Senate by running the Democratic Party into the ground.

Consider things from her point of view. She spent most of last year as the front runner, the press all but anointing her before even a single vote was cast. Combine that with the fact that as First Lady for eight years she saw, up close and personal, the power which she and many others so desire. Losing the nomination to Barack Obama is a lot of dead hope for her, on a simple human level that’s got to be tough to shake off.

In 2004 her name was bandied about before John Kerry’s corpse was even cold. 2008 was going to be her year, but now it’s suddenly dawned on everyone that 2008 was her only year. Consider, if Obama wins in November there won’t be an open Democratic nomination until 2016. And if Obama makes it two full terms he’ll likely have a designated successor and she’ll be nearly seventy. If Obama loses in November there will be an open nomination in four years but it comes with two huge disadvantages for Hillary. First, her Senate seat is up for grabs in 2012. It’s one thing to run for President when you’ve got your powerful and cushy legislative job to fall back upon, but working without a net would be a lot less attractive to someone who is clearly both very cautious and very interested in seeing her policy ideas put into action. Second, if Obama does lose in November there are going to be a lot of people within the Democratic Party who will place a lot of blame, justifiably or not, on her and her husband. That alone might be enough to keep her from getting this close again.

For Hillary it really is now or never, and even for a seasoned politician with skin as thick as an elephant accepting that kind of loss isn’t easy. The fact that she still has a small chance at the nomination is enough to impel her forward and no amount of op-ed articles or talking head shows are going to convince her otherwise. That is quite understandable, even commendable in a “never say die” kind of way. But the idea that this contest is going to go to the convention, that the fight over Michigan and Florida will poison both states for the Blues in November, is just plain silly.

The simple fact is that while Obama cannot win enough pledged delegates to sew up the nomination outright, he can - and probably will - win enough delegates and votes in the remaining nine contests to irrevocably seal his lead in both. Maybe that happens on May 6, maybe it doesn’t happen until June 3, but it is going to happen. That’s when Hillary’s cell phone is going to ring, and it might be Bill on the other end, it might be Howard Dean, it might be someone from her campaign, but whoever it is will tell her that it’s all over and she’ll accept it.

She’ll accept it because she knows that there’s a difference between playing hard until the clock runs out, no matter what the scoreboard says, and refusing to leave the field after the referee has blown the whistle. She isn’t going to risk making herself a pariah for half the Democratic Party. She’s still a Senator, and while she’s more famous than most of her Senate colleagues, she needs to get along with them if she wants to see her ideas translated into action.

Hillary Clinton is very clearly willing to fight for this nomination, but there just isn’t any real, solid evidence to support the idea that she’s willing to destroy the party to win. If she’s still at it in the middle of June it’ll be a different matter, but for right now she hasn’t done anything wrong. If she’s still behind when the voting is done, and it sure looks like she will be, I trust her to congratulate Obama and then do her best to make it a Blue November.