The Daily Background

There is a healthy debate both in the blogosphere and the greater Democratic Party over whether or not Clinton should drop out of the race now that it is virtually assured that Obama will be the nominee.

Clinton’s critics argue that she is only serving to bloody up Obama at a time when Democrats could be uniting and focusing against McCain. Those who want Clinton to stay in the race say that it helps the party overall in terms of driving up Democratic voter registration and party-building in the remaining states with contests, and that it also helps keep media attention away from McCain. I tend to side more with the former point of view, but there are smart people (who aren’t necessarily Hillary fans) that argue the latter points.

All of that aside, I have yet to see anyone, even ardent Clinton supporters, defend her insistence on staying in the race until the convention. DNC Chair Howard Dean recently said that this race should not carry over into the convention for the good of the party. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has similarly said that “things are being done” to wrap this thing up and avoid a contested convention. And House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said that superdelegates ought not to overturn pledged delegates, which in effect means that she wants the race to be over by the time the last contest has finished.

Simply said, a convention fight– as Clinton seems now to be banking on– would be horribly destructive for the party and would do more damage to our eventual nominee (Obama) than any conceivable line of attack Clinton could throw at him.

Filed under: Z-TDB Blog