Hillary Clinton's Pointless Fight

By Broadside Opinion Columnist Brandon Cosby

Well, she's down, but she's not out, folks. She's, as Samantha Power infamously stated, the monster that won't die. She is the Jason Voorhees of the 2008 primary season. Hillary Clinton fights on, but for no discernible reason.

She is down by mathematical, financial and public opinion. Half of the Democratic Party seems to wish nothing more than to shake her and plead: “What are you doing? Why do you persist?” She trails in pledged delegates, in states won and in simple votes. The only thing the junior senator from New York leads in is super-delegates, and unless the Democratic Party suddenly becomes a lot more interested in embracing their own political demise, there is no way they'll allow them to overturn the current results.

The plain, clear, clean, indisputable fact remains: Clinton cannot win. So, why does she continue? What does victory for her look like?

Much like our current occupation of Iraq, the single issue that seems to hurt the senator most, Clinton appears to be stuck in a statistical and logistical quagmire. She cannot continue to a clear and simple victory. It will not happen. Yet, she strides on, hemorrhaging money and haranguing against Sen. Barack Obama, while oozing out overtones of racist and xenophobic rhetoric via surrogates in some bizarre attempt to win.

It's an illogical and strange sight – a desperate grab at power that continues to fall further out of her reach. Victory will only come for her in the form of a back-room deal or a nod for the vice presidency. And failing that, she may just be satisfied by the demise of Obama in an "I told you so" moment.

These are selfish and scary things to hope for, but what remains scarier is the idea that the senator has it in her. Winning straight out is an impossible victory, while her campaign remains stuck in the biggest political entanglement since the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Ironically for the senator, the parallels to the war run deep. Our forces struggle against prevailing local opinion in a far away country, trying to stamp out extremism while, in turn, stirring up more. Clinton continues to do just the same. She fights against the voters and public opinion while, at the same time, precipitously destroying any chance she may have in the future of a party after her agonizingly-slow-to-die campaign finally succumbs.

She could quit now, take the vice presidency and help move the Democrats to victory. Or, she could move on to become a senior senator and possibly the greatest majority leader Congress has ever seen. Either one of these situations remains infinitely more likely than her winning the nomination.

But the lady won't give up. She won't listen to reason. She remains just as blind as the Bush administration, refusing to see the facts when faced with a failing policy. Her supporters ramble off nonsensical reasons for why she's ahead or why she's tied or why she shouldn't give up quite yet. They say that all the votes should be tallied and that it's undemocratic to finish the game now in some ridiculous sports-related analogy.

That's just not true. This primary season has lasted far longer than most. People have voted, and they have voted against her.

Futility is the reason most campaigns end. When it becomes clearly monetarily and logistically impossible, they fold. Well, that's happened. The voters have rejected her. It's a sad result and certainly not the one the Clinton campaign was looking for, but regardless, it remains.

As Jon Stewart joked recently, the Democratic Party is in danger of suffocating under too much democracy. He criticized the calls for the senator to quit and brushed them off as ridiculous. Hardly. These are legitimate concerns. If this contest continues on to the convention in August, the Democrats will have a bare three months to coalesce around a nominee and heal fractures that have trifurcated a party between races, genders and age in a startling way.

The Clinton campaign seems to be running on the audacity of hopelessness. This doesn't just refer to the pragmatic approach of her campaign, saying that lofty ideals and powerful rhetoric just won't cut it. It's the idea that she's running out the clock, pardon the ridiculous sports-related analogy, and is fast spiraling into the void of a brokered convention that holds her best chance of her winning.

It's the idea that at the darkest, latest hour, she will find some way to eek out a victory. Such a result will destroy the party, even if it hands her a win momentarily. It is death by prolonged democracy, and the threat is very real.

As proud as I am to be a Democrat, we have a remarkable ability to screw things up at the last possible second. I'm confident that if the 2006 midterm elections were held a month later, we would have collectively found a way to bungle it all and lose in a big way.

But, fear not, Republicans. Seven months remain until November. We'll find a way to screw things up by then and Clinton may just be handing us our best chance.