So Hard to Say Goodbye

After last Tuesday's primaries in Indiana and North Carolina, I wrote that Hillary Clinton was now losing by every single valid metric (and even some that were not so valid). I was actually incorrect when I wrote that because she did still hold a superdelegate lead. Obviously, this is a flimsy thing because the super delegates aren't bound to one candidate or the other and because her once triple digit lead was down to a single digit.

Paltry though it may have been, even that has since vanished. According to CNN, the two are now tied. Real Clear Politics even gives Obama a superdelegate lead of four. So the race is drawing to a close. But, as is often the case in these kinds of things, it's so hard to say goodbye. So Hillary persists in her dogged pursuit of the nomination based around the argument that voters are racist and won't vote for Obama. (Oddly, this "electability" argument hasn't stopped him from being more electable than her.)

I try to assume the best of people's intentions, even in politics. But with that said, it's hard to approve of what Hillary said recently regarding her broader appeal. "I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on," she said in an interview with USA TODAY. As evidence, Clinton cited an Associated Press article "that found how Sen. Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me."

On first reading of that, it really seems to me like she's equating hard working Americans with white Americans who haven't graduated college. By extension she seems to be saying that black Americans or even white Americans who went to college were not hardworking Americans. Wow. Now, I'm willing to believe that she didn't mean it to come out that way, but that's pretty bad. Even the facade of running a positive campaign is gone now. Now it's about tearing down one nominee and setting different demographic groups against each other. I guess it really is hard to say goodbye.