The delegate count has moved higher for both but the song and dance remains the same.
Hillary Clinton will stay in the race as long as possible because of a purely self serving interest in becoming President of the United States. She appears to be driven by an ideology that somehow this office is duly hers and that she is rightfully entitled to the Democratic nomination which is merely a speed bump on the way to a coronation she's been planning for at least 8 years.
In December she was ahead in pledged delegates (super), polls, and money. Now she trails across the board and it's clear she is incredulous and more desperate at the idea that an upstart with no real political metal has upstaged her at the very moment she's been waiting and planning for in all these years.
Instead of bowing out with grace, dignity, and a noble or perhaps stately intent cognizant of the fact that even if she splits the remaining delegate count she simply cannot win the nomination she chooses to lumber on in the hope that somehow the numbers and fate can twist in her favor. In typical Clinton fashion she continues to ride this failed campaign while attempting to weave any possible scenario that will give her the nomination she so desperately covets.
Michigan and Florida voters got the shaft by the Democratic Party. Clearly the Clinton’s party influence under estimated just how important those two states would be to the coronation they once felt so surely would be bestowed upon the Mrs. Had they a clue that a once seemingly insurmountable lead in the polls would be blown out of the water in South Carolina they may have played the Michigan and Florida cards differently. They assumed that Michigan and Florida were irrelevant then and were unwilling to fight the party bosses to let their delegates be seated and be counted. They may have even ran a slightly different campaign perhaps even geared toward solving the problems faced by the United States instead of this ideological food fight that even if at one point was saleable because of the Clinton name obviously would not hold up to the fresh face of change. Change from the name Clinton. Change from the name Bush. Change from 16 years of business as usual that has us in a pretty tall barrel of pickles.
Hillary Clinton is a very sad and tired story that should wrap up soon for the sake of the Democratic Party. Women deserve a better chance at the highest office in US politics and that day will come soon.
As for the ongoing ideological food fight we have no real idea who Barack Obama or John McCain really are as potential presidents but this is absolutely true: The next President of the United States will face the toughest opening act a sitting president of this country has ever faced.
We are at war in two countries with the kind of religious fanaticism that knows no end. We have no real or identifiable energy policy that is actively managing a reduction in dependence on fossil fuels. We have an education system that is producing the 16th rated student scores in math and science in the world relative to other countries at the very time when those aspects of education hold the very to our economic existence. We have an aging population in the form of “Baby Boomers” whose impact on Social Security and Medicare threaten the very economic life blood they worked so hard to create. We have a porous border patrol and emigration policy that has allowed a significant portion of our economy to become dependent upon a labor force that some would expel because they perform low wage jobs without benefits that other Americans simply won’t do. We have countless other issues that deserve far more attention than Reverend Wright or Monica Lewinsky or any of the other nonsensical mud that these campaigns insist on slinging at each other.
The next President of the United States, be it man or woman, black, white, Latino, or Asian, Jew, Catholic, or Muslim will have to have the imagination, dedication, and fortitude to push the needle forward in ways we have not been able to in conjure in the last 16 years.
"You cannot take your place in the long line of those who came before you simply by sitting in front of a screen or at a keyboard. Life away from the keyboard, the PDA and the cell phone is a life in which you connect to the websites of your personal convictions, and that is an obligation you must carry with you the rest of your days." -- Tom Brokaw, Author – "The Greatest Generation".