Hillary, The Voters are Speaking. Are You Listening?
The voters spoke to you tonight, Hillary. Loudly. They pushed back on the petty politics and told you they want change and I’m sorry, but it’s not you. Please don’t try to argue with a 17-point spread in Wisconsin and a 50 point spread in Hawaii, a 10-consecutive state loss and a tinier-than-slim chance of picking up Ohio and Texas by the margins you need.
The only way you could win Texas and Ohio by huge margins would be to destroy the Democratic Party. Consider what Michael Gerson had to say last Friday:
Though it is increasingly unlikely, Clinton may still have a path to the nomination — and what a path it is. She merely has to puncture the balloon of Democratic idealism; sully the character of a good man; feed racial tensions within her party; then eke out a win with the support of unelected superdelegates, thwarting the hopes of millions of new voters who would see an inspiring young man defeated by backroom arm-twisting and arcane party rules.
Unlikely — but it would be a fitting contribution to the Clinton legacy of monumental selfishness.
This is your moment of truth. Are you with us or against us? Your margins of loss are growing, not diminishing. Your base is diminishing. The longer you stay in the campaign, the wider the margins become. This is not coincidence. Voters are not rejecting your message; they are rejecting the messenger.
The polls speak for themselves, even assuming the widest margin of error. At best, you’re going to break even in Texas and the same in Ohio. Even with Howard Wolfson out there hacking for you, you’re not making a dent in his numbers. But Barack Obama is making a huge dent in yours.
This doesn’t have to be a win or lose proposition. Consider this win-win scenario: If you were to step down now and challenge for the Senate Majority Leader seat that Harry Reid plans to vacate, think of what could be accomplished in the next four years! Let’s be real here: There’s no way that you and Barack Obama could or should end up on the same ticket. You went for President and I’m sure the idea of being a tiebreaker doesn’t fit with your ambition. But if you were to be Senate Majority Leader in a time where Barack Obama was President, you would be the consensus-builder, the one who actually makes things happen there on Capitol Hill. Right now, we count it as victory if things don’t happen. With like-minded leadership in the White House and House of Representatives, you have a strong and influential voice.
This is, after all, about change. But change means we have to have cooperation of the Congress. It’s not just something a President can do, as Mr. Bush is discovering. Presidents with an oppositional Congress hear “No, you can’t”. Presidents with a like-minded Congress hear “Yes, we can, maybe we’ll make some compromises, but yes, we can do that.”
Do it now, Hillary. If you don’t, you will set the Democrats back in the national campaign. Our convention isn’t until August, but we need a candidate — one candidate — to be out on the campaign trail right now getting our message out not just to the Democrats, but also the independents and the Republicans.
Look at it this way, Hillary. If you step down now, the GOP attack dogs have six months to vet Obama before the convention. If they dig something up, you’re always there waiting in the wings. I don’t think they will, but the longer you stay in the campaign the more chance there is that you will invent something (sort of like this plagiarism thing) that will arm their cannons. But if you step out and the party unifies around Obama, then there will be no surprises this fall, the Democrats will win, possibly by a landslide, and we have the opportunity to transform the country from the bottom up in substantive, meaningful ways.
Do this now, Hillary. Baratunde is one of the voices who doesn’t care for the messenger, but believes in the message. Do it because the message matters to you, too.
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