Much of the blogosphere is up in arms about a quote from Bill Clinton's autobiography, where he writes, "On April 7, we also won in Kansas, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. On April 9, Paul Tsongas announced that he would not reenter the race. The fight for the nomination was effectively over." As Andrew Sullivan replies, "So much for [Hillary's] June bullshit" But on this point, I'll actually defend Clinton. The 1992 campaign was, effectively, over in April. But that didn't mean all candidates save Clinton had to drop out of the running. Jerry Brown, in particular, stayed in right up to the convention. The problem is that Hillary Clinton, when she argues that past races went till June, is misrepresenting the critique of her candidacy, namely, that she's not running to win so much as she's running to wound. My sense of the situation is she actually should continue her campaign till June 3rd. She's come so far that she should finish. But that doesn't mean she should spend her days attacking the legitimacy of the process, demanding the DNC count a vote in Michigan where she was the only candidate on the ballot, or comparing the primary's rules -- which she agreed to -- to the Civil Rights Act and the 2000 Florida Recount. Clinton, we can all agree, is not simply running to finish. On some level, she's still running to win. But the chances of that are so slim, and the tactics she's had to adopt so brutal, and so dangerous to the chances of Democrats in Florida and Michigan, that it increasingly looks as if she's mainly running to make Obama lose. And that strategy deserves condemnation no matter when Jerry Brown dropped out.
