PLAY IT TILL THE END

Surprisingly, from the all-Obama-all-the-time Huffington Post comes this opinion in favor of letting the primary run its course, a demonstration of a reasonable faith in the democratic process.

Nervous Democrats fearful they will never get back to the White House want peace now, a release from the tension, move on to the 'big one' with McCain. Sorry, but it's not going to happen. And that will be just fine. Because when a winner does emerge, after Pennsylvania, or Puerto Rico, or maybe at the end of August on the last day of the Democratic Convention in Denver, Democrats will get over licking their wounds pretty quick in order to start licking their chops in anticipation of knocking off McCain. And then things will really get down and dirty -- just as they have in every election for the past 225 years.

The simple truth is, if Hillary succumbed to the screeds of WWTSBQ? many of her supporters WOULD be bitter about the Michigan-Florida voter disenfranchisement and about the premature calls for her to drop out of a so closely fought race, and I don't doubt that some of them (though probably less than now say they might) would refuse to vote for Obama or transfer their vote to McCain. But after a fair fight, with all votes counted, we will accept the Democratic nominee. And I believe Obama's voters would do the same.

So let's get on with it. The fair fight, I mean. Count the votes. All of them.

VOTERS OWN THEIR VOTES

Oh, my. As so often happens, Gene Lyons gets it. And writes about it (emphasis mine).

Better that the voters of two critical swing states comprising close to 10 percent of the electorate be disenfranchised than that Obama’s inevitable nomination be delayed. Nobody’s expected to notice the main reason that Team Obama faulted every suggested revote plan: He wouldn’t stand the proverbial snowball’s chance of winning either state’s primary. Rather than face that unpleasant truth, his supporters proposed various compromises with one common denominator: that Obama be awarded delegates he hasn’t won. That this strikes them as reasonable reflects the deep unreality into which roughly half the Democratic party has fallen. Once again, with feeling: The votes belong to the voter, not the candidates. Oddly, it’s Sen. Hillary Clinton, who grasps that elementary democratic principle, who critics say feels entitled to the presidency. Meanwhile, TV pundits like CNN’s Jack Cafferty warn us that should Obama’s supporters be disappointed in their hopes, “you wouldn’t want to live in this country.” A more concise way of turning the November contest into a racial referendum can’t be imagined. Who will win that one ? Then what ?

DON'T COUNT HILLARY OUT YET

Craig Crawford has an interesting observation on the Michigan-Florida debacle:

How amazing that Democrats have a frontrunner who is seemingly afraid to allow re-votes in Michigan and Florida. Or at least that is how Barack Obama is allowing it to appear.

Obama is all that stands in the way of letting voters try again in those battleground states. That’s probably a winning strategy for the party nomination. But the general election is another story.

For what it’s worth to Democrats, only Hillary Rodham Clinton has ended up with the political incentive to seat the convention delegates from Michigan and Florida. Obama sees no such advantage.

A Democratic national convention without Florida and Michigan suggests the need for an Electoral College strategy that contemplates victory without either state in the party’s November tally.

Yes, the woman who's accused of being willing to do "anything to win" is facing a candidate whose memes of hope, unity, change, and a "new kind of politics" don't prevent him from disenfranchising more than two million voters if they weren't HIS voters.

It's politics, folks. And Obama clearly is as strategic and willing to do "anything" to win as he accuses Hillary of being.

UPDATE: The invaluable Eriposte crunches the numbers of the popular vote and concludes that Hillary could wipe out Obama's popular vote lead with impressive wins in the next primaries:

In other words, given some of Sen. Clinton's current polling leads in PA, it is difficult but not implausible or impossible to see her wipe out Obama's adjusted popular vote lead - including FL/MI, with all of MI's "uncommitted" assigned to Sen. Obama entirely - just in PA alone (setting aside the other contests). She is also on track to end the primary with the popular vote lead amongst primary voters who are Democrats. These are just a couple of reasons why Sen. Clinton is on entirely legitimate grounds in continuing to stay in the primary race and in not listening to the MSM-like blowhards and haters spewing bile at her day in and day out.

Nobody ever won by counting out a Clinton before the fat lady sings.

Run, Hillary, run!