WHY WE WANT HILLARY TO STAY IN THE RACE

There's so much pressure from the Obamabots for Hillary to drop out of the race to "save the party" or "save the general election," that I thought I'd post a few brief remarks about why we Hillaryites think it's important that she not only stay in, but win.

(1) Obama doesn't stand as much of a chance to win the general election as Hillary. He'll never win most of the states in which he won the Democratic primary or caucus -- no Democrat could. He's discarded Michigan and Florida, two must-win states for a Democratic nominee, and disaffected their voters by blocking a revote. And Hillary's base, women and seniors, are reliable voting blocs that have given little evidence that they will transfer their affections from Hillary to Obama if he is the nominee.

(2) Hillary's renowned toughness and resilience are exactly the kind of qualities we need in a candidate to face the Rethuglicans in the fall. She's a fighter, not a talker, and she's proven she speaks to and for the bread-and-butter Democrats, the kind who voted for Reagan and Bush.

(3) Sorry, but Obama and John McCain have a long way to go in educating themselves on foreign affairs and policy. Hillary is not "Mamie Eisenhower," as Zbigniew Brzezinski told the Morning Joe crowd the other morning to great hilarity. She is not comparable to his travel agent, as he also infamously declared. Her dozens of trips around the world were not mere tea parties, they were serious contacts with foreign leaders throughout the world, and they were substantive in nature. Her mastery of the nuances of foreign affairs has brought her the endorsements of dozens of military flag officers and diplomats.

(5) We simply loathe the sexism and misogyny Obama and his supporters have displayed during this campaign. It's not the direction we want to see the Party take. And we want to send that message loud and clear to the DNC, the media, and the Democratic Party convention.

I don't believe we need to encourage Hillary to stay in the race. She'll do it because her commitment is not to power, as so many of her detractors claim, but to the good of the country. If all she wanted was power, she could bargain her way out and receive the plum Senate Majority Leader role, a vice presidency, any number of prestigious positions. That's not Hillary. She's in this because she believes, and rightly so IMHO, that she's best equipped to defeat the Republicans, get us out of Iraq, improve the economy, achieve universal healthcare, secure the borders, create jobs, address climate change, and advance the interests of Americans and their families.

Thank you, Kevin Drum, for inserting a bit of reason and fairness into the otherwise irrational CDS among the left blogosphere:

So fine: Hillary's chances are slim and maybe it's time to withdraw. But how do we hop from there to an out-of-the-blue factual assertion that Hillary would just as soon see Obama lose in November? That's crazy. There's just no evidence that anyone in the Clinton campaign actually thinks this way. It's like the 90s all over again and it's driving me nuts.

My fellow Obama supporters need to get a grip. I know that resistance to CDS seems futile these days, but resist anyway! Hillary has a long, long history as a partisan animal. She'd no more root for a McCain victory than she would for another attack by al-Qaeda. What's more, on the level of pure political tactics, she knows perfectly well — and so should we — that if she loses neither she nor Bill will control anything and she'll have no future presidential prospects in 2012 or any other year. It's either 2008 or nothing for Hillary.

And if she gave even a hint of not supporting Obama wholeheartedly during the fall campaign? Not only would she have no future presidential prospects, she'd be lucky to escape being tarred, feathered, and ridden out of town on a rail. She'd be the most reviled Democrat on Capitol Hill. She knows that too.

Hillary's running a very tough campaign, and she might be making a mistake staying in the race. But she's not rooting for John McCain and she's not secretly plotting Barack Obama's downfall.