End Game

Well, the end of times are upon us. Or at least, the time to end is. After being clearly destined to be the loser for months and a day after it became clear that Obama was the winner, Hillary Clinton announced that she was ending her campaign for the Democratic nomination.

In an e-mail to supporters apparently sent last night, Hillary announced that she was going to be stepping out of the race and giving her support to Obama. The letter seems to kind of pretend that she wasn't claiming to be winning as recently as yesterday. Nor does it say that she lost. It just says that now she'll be supporting Barack Obama for president. It's kind of like she woke up one morning and decided that she didn't want to run anymore.

Her actual announcement is apparently scheduled for Friday. We'll see how she handles things there, but right now she seems to be backing out with dignity. We'll see how well she does trying to move her supporters over to Obama (and more importantly, how he does at bringing them in).

As this chapter of the race comes to a close I just have to say how really exciting it all is. Never mind that I've never really supported a winning candidate before; we're now looking at an election set up to be a clash of contrasting visions for what America should be as we move into the future. Both McCain and Obama present unapologetically different world views and visions of what the country can be. I hope that the race stays clean and focused because if it does, we'll get to see which vision of America people really want to follow.