Fighting to the end

Hillary Clinton supporter Ellen Malcolm wants her to fight it out to the end:

So here we are in the fourth quarter of the nominating process and the game is too close to call. Once again, the opponents and the media are calling for Hillary to quit. The first woman ever to win a presidential primary is supposed to stop competing, to curtsy and exit stage right.

I can sympathize with her anger over people calling for her candidate to quit. If nothing else, it can look like the woman is being condescendingly patted on the head and ushered out of the still-very-male-dominated process--and I don't think even the appearance of that is acceptable.

But let's put things into perspective a little bit. It is not as though Clinton was the scrappy underdog who, through grit and determination, miraculously rose in the ranks to become a real contender for the nomination. The opposite is true: she was the heavy favorite to win, the "inevitable" candidate, the establishment favorite. By all accounts, she probably wouldn't be about to lose today if she hadn't shot herself in the foot in several creative different ways. So I think the victimization narrative that Malcolm is trying gin up here doesn't harmonize well with the facts.

In the end, I have no problems with Clinton finishing out the primary cycle, especially if she and her supporters feel that it is the fitting way to conclude things. But it's just an empirical fact at this point that Clinton has no chance of winning the nomination, and Clinton needs to recognize this. If she doesn't--and continues the harsh negative attacks, or, heaven help us, drags out the fight all the way to convention time--then she really will do serious harm to the Democratic Party.

Ironically, in the final analysis it is Malcolm who seems to be underestimating Clinton's power--by pretending that she is so marginalized that she cannot tear apart the party.