Don't Go Out Kicking and Screaming

The only rational reason for the Clintons to remain in the contest for the Democratic nomination is that Hillary may still win more popular votes than Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.). Currently, she is trailing him by about 700,000 votes - despite the fact that many of his victories were in caucuses, thereby artificially reducing his total - but with Pennsylvania waiting at the end of this month, and Michigan and Florida still up for debate, three big pro-Hillary states could still combine to give Hillary the argument that more people checked her name off at the ballot box than Obama.

So let's assume that the Michigan and Florida Democratic Parties actually get their act together and organize do-over primaries, and that after all the states have voted, and with Obama's totals reduced by all the caucuses (giving many pro-Obama states a much lower number of votes) – then Clinton comes up with a higher total in the popular vote.

These are all bold assumptions. And where do they get her?

Obama currently has a lead of 170 pledged delegates. His delegate lead today is higher than it was before Clinton won Texas and Ohio, both big states where her support among Democrats is strong. There is no reason to believe that his lead will shrink considerably, even if he loses Pennsylvania and loses do-overs in Michigan and Florida. Throughout this year's primary, Obama's losses have been generally small, while Clinton's losses have generally been wipeouts. Obama, fueled by his oratory, has won mostly landslides, while Clinton has won mostly hard-fought victories. He has won 22 states with a margin of more than 10 points, compared to her 7. That, in short, is the explanation for Obama's insurmountable delegate lead, now that four-fifths of the states have already voted.

Certainly, the Clintons would have a stronger moral claim to the nomination than they do currently, if they could make up their deficit in the popular vote between now and June. Observers are correct to point out that a primary this close will inevitably be decided by the 795 unelected Democratic Party "superdelegates" at the convention. But even then, there are only 334 uncommitted superdelegates, according to RealClearPolitics.

If Obama does nothing but maintain his current delegate lead between now and June, the Clintons will need around 70 percent of these 334 uncommitted superdelegates to come to their side. In other words, Obama needs only a third of them to buy into his argument that a time has come for a leadership change in the Democratic Party.

The race is over, and Obama has won. He started out, last January, with none of the advantages. Clinton had the establishment behind her, she had her husband, the former president (who is insanely popular among Democrats), she had the fact that she was a woman (a majority of Democrats are women), she had 100 percent name recognition, and she had a decades-old network for fundraising. It was widely assumed that the nomination belonged to the Clintons, and that Obama was just setting himself up to inherit the party in 2012 or 2016.

Obama had an uphill struggle all of last year. His first victory came in fundraising - it turned out that the "longshot" with the funny name was generating a lot more excitement in the grassroots than the establishment candidate, and he opened up a fundraising lead in the first quarter of 2007 that has since expanded to tens of millions of dollars.

Even then, for a long time, Obama's money didn't translate into support, and Clinton's name recognition and strong ties to Washington continued to brand him as a longshot. But just as he didn't slow the pace of his 2004 Senate campaign even when he had no Republican opponent, so too the Obama of 2007 campaigned tirelessly despite all the obstacles. He used his fundraising advantage to build a superior campaign structure, state by state, phone call by phone call. When everyone had concluded that he would have to wait four or eight more years, he challenged that assumption by campaigning hard, honing his speaking skills and winning by a surprisingly convincing margin in Iowa.

Then, his poll numbers took off. Between the day before the Iowa Caucuses in January and late February, Obama won a string of unexpected victories, and Clinton's double-digit, nationwide lead crumbled. The latest Rasmussen tracking poll puts him 3 points ahead.

What makes Obama's come-from-behind especially amazing is the breadth of the support he has attracted. The depth of that support was already demonstrated through his fundraising, which has set and broken records. The breadth has been demonstrated by the large number of Independents and even Republicans who have voted for Obama. A personal acquaintance of mine, a hardcore Republican from Texas, even voted for Obama in the Texas primary. The man has built his entire political career as a uniter in a time of division. It is far too late for the Clintons to try to imitate that. They haven't really tried - trying instead to come from behind with an onslaught of personal attacks and negative advertising, which have continued, with little significant effect, for months now.

The primary may not officially be over, but the voters have spoken, the numbers are what they are, and the outcome is a foregone conclusion - though not the foregone conclusion that everyone expected. In 2004, Obama delivered the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in Massachusetts, a Democratic establishment-heavy state that Clinton carried easily. In 2008, he will accept the nomination at a very different convention in Denver, Colo., a state that Obama won by a landslide and which is at the cutting edge of a new majority emerging in this country.

Rather than going out kicking and screaming, and risking permanently alienating the new leader of the party, the Clintons - who are supposed to be political survivors - should increase their political capital by gracefully withdrawing from the race, allow Obama to confront the McCain machine, and prepare Clinton to assume the role of Senate Majority Leader. With women in charge of both the Senate and the House of Representatives, and a black Democrat with bipartisan appeal in the White House, 2009 could indeed be a historic year in America