James Carville, one of the most vocal supporters of Senator Clinton, is, ironically, asking Democrats to stop killing themselves. If Senator Clinton simply dropped out for the good of the party after it became statistically impossible for her to win the nomination without arm-twisting super delegates that would enrage Obama supporters and young, idealistic voters, then we wouldn't be having this conversation. From the FT:
"In this, the most fascinating and longest-running Democratic primary process of our time, we were presented with a silly moment that unfortunately is all too reflective of modern American culture. Consider the case of one Samantha Power.
"Ms Power, a Pulitzer prize-winning author, professor of public policy at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and senior foreign policy adviser to Barack Obama, was forced to resign after she referred to Hillary Clinton (whom I admire and am supporting) as a mpnster. She tried to retract her statement but, being unable to declare something off the record ex post facto (do the Scots even have journalism rules?), her words were printed.
"What is becoming a shamefully predictable brouhaha ensued. To prevent her candidate from further embarrassment, Ms Power performed the ritual act of American political hara-kiri and resigned. The problem is that calls for resignation are becoming cries of wolf in US politics today. Every time one campaign's surrogate says something mildly offensive about the other candidate, resignation calls are swift.
As if this utter silliness was not enough, Tom Daschle, former Senate majority leader and an honourable man, went into an absurd resignation frenzy by demanding that Howard Wolfson, Mrs Clinton's communications director, resign for comparing the tactics of the Obama campaign to Ken Starr, the former independent counsel.
"This sort of hyper-sensitivity diminishes everyone who engages in it, both the candidates and the media. Politics is a rough and tumble business, and yet there seems to be an effort by the commentariat to sanitise American politics to some type of high-level Victorian debating society."
Well, another way to stop the bloodbath: Senator Clinton can broker a noble quit the race "for the good of the party" to go after the Majority leader position.
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