If Al Gore and Jimmy Carter do really ask Hillary Clinton to drop out of the nominating contest it will be a huge development. But I am not sure that they will not just be told to eff off and mind their own damn business. The Scotsman is a very reputable newspaper, but the story is not sourced at all. I can’t put too much credence in their report.
DEMOCRAT grandees Jimmy Carter and Al Gore are being lined-up to deliver the coup de grâce to Hillary Clinton and end her campaign to become president. Falling poll numbers and a string of high-profile blunders have convinced party elders that she must now bow out of the primary race.
Former president Carter and former vice-president Gore have already held high-level discussions about delivering the message that she must stand down for the good of the Democrats.
“They’re in discussions,” a source close to Carter told Scotland on Sunday. “Carter has been talking to Gore. They will act, possibly together, or in sequence.”
Here’s what I do know. Clinton does not have a convincing ‘electability’ argument against Barack Obama because she cannot win the nomination in such a way that the party will be more united behind her campaign than they would be behind an Obama campaign. The Scotsman puts it politely:
Obama’s campaign has been a phenomenon in American politics, bringing in record numbers of new voters and record funding, and few think the superdelegates would dare deny him victory if he wins the popular vote.
It would also invite the unedifying spectacle of a mostly white elite denying an African American candidate a chance for the presidency. “It would cause a scandal to do that,” says one party official. “To turn around to the black community and say, ‘You got the most votes, but no’? Unlikely.”
Quoting a ‘party official’ is not very impressive, but the underlying point is unassailable. Clinton might have been more electable if she had won Iowa, Super Tuesday, and any of the metrics of the race, but she didn’t. At this point it is impossible that she can emerge as the nominee without being seen as an usurper by the majority of the electorate. So, her efforts to paint Obama as unelectable really amount to nothing more than an argument that no Democrat is electable, and in the current political environment that is an absurd assertion. It might be true that Clinton is unelectable, but only because she has alienated such a large portion of the Democratic base and because winning the nomination would only further alienate the base.
Anyone that is still seriously considering a Clinton nomination should be honest. She can’t win the nomination in a way that would render her more electable than Obama. And since that is her sole remaining argument and justification for getting the nomination, she is wrong and delusional. At this point she should be defending Obama against unfair attacks on his patriotism, his choice of church, his qualifications, and his merits. That she is doing the opposite is not a reason to support her, but a reason to be ‘bitter’.
If Gore and Carter weigh in, they’ll be weighing in because they understand this very basic reality. I hope they do.
