It Is Time For Hillary Clinton To Withdraw

It would be historically noble -- aristocratic, even -- for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton to withdraw her name at this moment of exigency as a candidate for the Presidency of the United States in favor of her opponent, Senator Barack Obama. Even as we speak, former Governor Mitt Romney, who had really no other choice but to step aside, is being forgiven for all his flip-flops, and is being lauded by conservatives for his magnanimity and grace in humiliating defeat. As caustic as his campaign was against McCain and Huckabee -- both of whom essentially colluded to double team him -- Romney came around and left the race ultimately with kind, healing words for the Senior Senator from Arizona and, by extention, his fractured party. How much greater and more symbolic would Hillary Clinton's lexit, at the top of her political game, to make way for the next generation, the inheritor of the mantle of Kennedy, the more difficult target of the right-wing hit machine, for Barack Obama.

Clearly, Senator Clinton lost Super Tuesday -- delegate count-wise and state-wise. From a two-day remove this is becoming quite evident, and will, no doubt, be meditated upon at Wagnerian length, on the all talking head shows on Sunday morning.

And while Clinton won the big states -- New York, California -- Obama won the heartland with record numbers. Colorado? The North Dakota caucuses? Bellwether Missouri? Georgia? These are states that the eventual Democratic candidate needs to compete in, and, thanks to Howard Dean's 50-state strategy, he or she can do so for the first time in a generation. But if hillary clinton cannot win there in the Democratic primary, then there is fear she might repeat the Gore-Kerry long division of Democrats holding urban states while conceding the heartland and the south to the Republican Party. And we know who wins in that calculus.

Obama offers a new electoral mathematics.

And the Clinton campaign is running out of juice. The junior Senator from the Empire State is presently dipping into her own book monies to finance her lagging, but still competitive campaign. And there are stories -- unconfirmed, to be sure, -- that some of her staff is forgoing payment in lieu of keeping the campaign going. As her ability to tap the checkbooks of wealthy donors wanes, Obama's is on the rise. The momentum is with the Senator from Illinois. The writing, dear reader, is on the wall.

The Clinton's have done irreparable harm to their relationship -- and the Democratic Party's relationship -- with African-Americans by their operatic selfishness leading to an unforgivably brutal campaign waged in South Carolina bordering on the racial. The Clinton's have all but exhausted the desires of Democratic donors to continue to fill their coffers. The Clinton's couldn't finish off Obama on Super Tuesday and are presently decline. The Clintons are no longer the frontrunners. It is over, they just don't know it yet.

What better way can The Clinton's exit the 2008 stage on the high note with their heads held high than to do this -- to elevate Obama at the height of his powers to turn his attentions on McCain -- and accept no Vice Presidential nod as payback. Hillary has been offered the Senate Majority Leadership before, behind closed doors. It is there that she is of most use to The Republic. Such an exit, stage left would renovate the shoddy house of Clinton in the minds of the many.

It would allow the Clinton's an honorable exit. It would protect all the politicians who risked their necks to support Hillary. It would be a perfect segue into the Senate Majority leader position, under *hopefully* a new Democratic administration.

Otherwise, quite possibly, The Clintons of Arkanas and Chappaqua may go down as the living embodiment of the worst examples of Baby Boomer selfishness. All the goodwill gained from the roaring economy of the 1990s, the oversight of the further dismantling of the Soviet Empire, and the peace dividend of the Cold War will be forgotten. Only the excessive appetites and humanitarian foreign policy failures -- Rwanda genocide, Haiti, Somalia -- would be remembered.

And that, true believers, would be the true American tragedy.