You make some good points. I agree that the voters should decide, and that includes the superdelegates, who I am sure in the end will vote in their own self-interest. Whatever happens, happens. Clinton still has a shot, though her blowout losses recently haven’t helped her cause. I’d still argue that Obama has run a fantastic campaign. He doesn’t have Clinton’s name recognition or clout in the party, yet he’s fought her inch for inch everywhere in the country. Clinton seemed to have the advantages in this race and squandered them.

As for the states Obama has won, I would only suggest that I do believe that either Hillary or Obama will carry the so-called “blue states” pretty easily in November. I’m not worried about Obama winning New York or California in the fall. What most interests me are the red states that I think are in play. That would include Ohio, Florida, Colorado, Iowa, and Virginia. Obama won the Colorado caucus easily, and won the Virginia primary easily. He didn’t campaign in Florida and Ohio is still to come. So it’s a bit of an open question for me at this point, but I’m optimistic about Obama’s chances of stealing Virginia in November. If the Republicans can’t win Virginia, they cannot win the election.

Anyway, enough talking about the horse race. Let’s just let the votes decide.

I forgot to say you have a very nice blog! I wander over here from Edge of the American West and will definitely be back. I am more a lurker than a commenter, though. (My description sounds a little more tacky that I intended…)

Ohio and Texas will be interesting. The CW is that Hillary must win those states to stay in the race. I agree. If Barack is the nominee, I’ll vote for him in November. I’ll probably still have doubts but I’ll vote for him nonetheless.

I still don’t understand why Fla and Michigan primaries were not reschedule. It seems to be a terrible penalty to disenfranchise people from voting. I thought only Republicans did that…

I agree that Hillary’s has had problems in her campaign, but, as of today, they are basically tied in the delegate count. Barack has run a good campaign but has also been the beneficiary of unprecedented MSM coverage, using the Clinton rules. I am 55, and I cannot recall a democratic primary candidate who has gotten that type of coverage.

On the other hand, Barack has not won the big states. It is a stubborn fact that she won CA, NJ, Ma, etc, and he didn’t. He couldn’t even win MA even with the Kennedy blessing! So much for passing the torch.

He may very well win the nomination, but I would feel more comfortable if he could win Tx, Oh, or Pa. Otherwise, he would have put together a winning strategy by winning states like Idaho, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, etc.

Do you think we get these states in the November election if Barack is the nominee? I don’t.

Speaking of backroom deals, I see Barack camp has issue statements today that the race is over since he is now in the lead by 50 or so delegates. I guess his strategy is to pressure the superdelagaes into voting for him. Surely, you must be outrage by this maneuver. Why not let the voters decide?

In the interest of setting up a comparison, check out this old page that looks like it was set up to contest Elizabeth Dole’s presidential candidacy back in 1999-2000. Many of the same themes are there as descibed in the Fish posts:

http://www.realchange.org/dole.htm

For example: charges that Dole is “calculating,” that she covers up stories for a naughty husband, that she is suspiciously wealthy, that she’s ideologically too slippery and unknowable (because of course that “calculating” nature!) The author of this website mentions Hillary Clinton as the closest analog to Elizabeth Dole, actually. It looks like some of HRC’s opponents could just do a global search and replace “Clinton” for “Dole!” (By the way, this looks to be a left-wing website, not an attack on Dole from the right.) “The scary thing is, since her whole life has been a single-minded pursuit of power — not for anything she has wanted to do with that power, but just to have it — what will she do if she really gets that power?” That sounds exactly like what’s over in the comments on Fish’s blog posts.

But such arguments are unrelated to the central problem, which is that you can look at Clinton and conclude very opposite things about her. You can do this not simply because we like to project dichotomies onto women, but because she herself has been all over the map during her political career, as has her husband. That’s not a problem of “women and leadership”; that’s a problem of “Hillary Clinton and leadership.”

If that’s true, then she’s run a miserable campaign. A smart campaign would have been able to get people out to caucus, and a smart campaign would have worked hard to try to win support from African-Americans. But instead, after losing in Iowa, Clinton brought out her husband to start attacking Obama, implying that he’s just a kid, not ready for prime time, and that his victories are based on racial divisions.

Clinton is losing not because of the prejudices of her fellow Democrats, but because she has run an inferior campaign. I don’t think she should withdraw now, but if she doesn’t win on March 4, then yes, she should. If she wins the nomination by a backroom deal at the convention, it will have been a Pyhrric victory, and a disaster for the Democrats. At that point, she will have certainly sacrificed the party for the sake of her personal ambition.

So in other words, many of these attacks against Clinton are not a result of her gender so much as a result of who she is as a candidate, and how she’s run this campaign.

Also, yes, she won big in her Senate campaigns. I voted for her twice, and this New Yorker just wishes she would go away soon.