"The clinch can keep you from losing, but it can't make you a winner"

We knew Bill Clinton was his own worst enemy. Can we now say the same about Hillary Clinton?

I am, of course, referring to the instantly notorious remarks made by Hillary Clinton to the editorial board of the Sioux Falls Argus Leader regarding calls for her to withdraw:

My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California. You know I just, I don't understand it.

It's not the first time Clinton has referenced that nightmarish 1968 campaign season, but I think it's probably the first time people were listening closely. The howls are being heard across the blogosphere and the mob is in hot pursuit. Olbermann whipped himself into a fury tonight with a "Special Comment" that rivals the worst he's thrown at Bush.

What was she thinking? Well, we know what she was thinking and she was apparently too tired to stick to coded phrases. Haven't we all -- by that I mean progressive Democrats -- had that nagging little fear in the back of our heads? If you're of a certain age, as I am, you can't forget how one hero of the Left after another was assassinated in the Sixties. You can't help but feel that there's a whole lotta deja vu happening these days. But we're too horrified by the thought to go there, at least not outside private conversations in hushed tones. To put in words such fears is to think the unthinkable. And that's exactly what Clinton wants the superdelegates to do.

Clinton has gassed about this over and over again. Olbermann enumerates:

She said, in an off-camera interview with Time on March 6, "Primary contests used to last a lot longer. We all remember the great tragedy of Bobby Kennedy being assassinated in June in L.A. My husband didn't wrap up the nomination in 1992 until June, also in California. Having a primary contest go through June is nothing particularly unusual. We will see how it unfolds as we go forward over the next three to four months."

In retrospect, we failed her when we did not call her out, for that remark, dry and only disturbing, in a magazine's pages. But somebody obviously warned her of the danger of that rhetoric:

After the Indiana primary, on May 7, she told supporters at a Washington hotel:

"Sometimes you gotta calm people down a little bit. But if you look at successful presidential campaigns, my husband did not get the nomination until June of 1992. I remember tragically when Senator Kennedy won California near the end of that process."

And at Shepherdstown, West Virginia, on the same day, she referenced it again:

"You know, I remember very well what happened in the California primary in 1968 as, you know, Senator Kennedy won that primary."

This is really very, very ugly. It's also a completely bogus comparison to this year's primary schedule. It's an unseemly grasping at straws, less than straws, to avoid the inevitable and she's too fevered to see how it's hurting her image and her political viability. It's the kind of thing a mean-spirited and calculating grasper would think to say.

I can't emphasize enough how Clinton is damaging herself. She no longer looks like a resolute fighter but like a punch-drunk palooka staying in the clinch because she'd hit the mat otherwise.

BooMan has a post up that explains it all pretty well:

We have reached a point in the campaign where Barack Obama has won the majority of delegates that were available to win through the contests that have been held. What this means is that Barack Obama will win the nomination (provided he is still alive to accept it) unless an overwhelming number of superdelegates decide that he is unelectable. And I don't mean that they will decide that he is less electable. They will only overturn the expressed will of the voters if they decide is absolutely unelectable. [...] No one cares if she is more electable so long as Obama is electable. But let me make this more clear. Should anything happen that renders Barack Obama unelectable between now and the convention, the delegates (who are all technically free agents) will be free to choose someone else as the nominee. This is true even on the first ballot where most delegates are 'pledged' to support a particular candidate. They are 'pledged', but they are not 'obligated'. They can choose to vote for whomever they want. And, provided a compelling enough reason (think Eliot Spitzer) they will do so.

What this means is that Hillary Clinton can be the nominee if Obama is somehow rendered unelectable (through scandal or sudden death), and that she can even be elected on the first ballot. And, because she ran a strong campaign and received nearly 50% of the vote and 50% of the delegates, she has a far, far stronger claim to be the back-up nominee than the third place finisher John Edwards, or any of the other candidates. She doesn't need to win more delegates to improve her case and she doesn't need to win more popular votes to improve her case.

BooMan hypothesizes a situation in which Obama is no longer a viable candidate, for whatever reason. Clinton's task would be "to woo undecided superdelegates and Obama delegates.... And by running a negative campaign all the way through to the end, she will have given the Obama delegates and many of the undecided supers more reason to oppose her candidacy."

In other words, she is making her nomination less, rather than more, likely by scrapping for every last vote and delegate, and in doing it in a negative way. That is precisely why her active candidacy right now makes no strategic sense if her goal is to win this year's nomination.

So, why are people asking her to drop out then? The answer is multifaceted but still rather simple. She has already established her case to be the fall-back candidate should anything disastrous happen to Obama or his campaign. That's done. Nothing is guaranteed to her, but she can't improve her case through further campaigning. Meanwhile, she is doing four things that are hurting Obama. She is imposing an opportunity cost on him by forcing him to campaign in places like Puerto Rico that have no votes in November. That costs time and money and it prevents him from focusing on John McCain, on building his campaign team, and on expanding the map of potentially competitive states. She is also actively delegitimizing the process by which he won the nomination and hardening her supporters feelings against Obama. This makes it harder to unite the party for the main contest. She is arguing that Obama is not an adequate nominee and strongly suggesting he is unelectable. It's never good to have a fellow Democrat running down the qualification of the presidential nominee. Lastly, she is sucking up money and volunteer hours for her own campaign, much of which should be made available for Obama and other Democrats running for office. And she isn't paying her bills. For all these reasons, there is a real cost to Clinton staying in the race, and she doesn't get anything tangible out of it except to worsen her chances of winning a brokered convention.

[...]

As it is, she has already ruined her chances of being on the ticket as vice-president and is rapidly losing her chance to be the second choice candidate, should something tragic happen. So, if we are judging things by how they help Clinton, she has not been too successful lately. But if we are judging things by how they hurt Obama, she has been all too successful.

For these reasons, it really appears that one of two things is the case. Either Clinton is somewhat unhinged and is engaged in self-destructive behavior, or she is actively undermining Obama's chances, not of winning the nomination, but of winning the election in November.

For now, I choose to think Clinton is "unhinged" and self-destructive. If she persists, I and many people will conclude that she's deliberately poisoning the well for Obama. Either way, her presidential ambitions have been dealt a death blow -- by her own hand.