Tuesday, May 13 saw Hillary Clinton win the West Virginia Democratic primary in emphatic fashion, taking the state by a margin of 67% to Barack Obama’s 26%.

Were the overall playing-field less skewed towards her opponent, Clinton may have been justified in claiming this success to represent a significant step towards winning the Party’s nomination for the presidency; however, almost every pundit in the Western hemisphere has already placed his or her money on Obama to sew up said endorsement in the near future, regardless of Hillary’s ostensibly-resounding triumph in West Virginia.

For her part, the redoubtable Clinton has displayed characteristic tenacity and bullishness in refusing to concede defeat, instead attempting to portray her recent pyrrhic victory as a crucial turning-point for her flagging campaign. The questions raised by her decision to battle on, though, are both plentiful and pressing.

For how much longer can such a debt-ridden quest be sustained? Would she be better-off accepting the inevitable in 2008 and instead looking forward to 2012? Will her relentless negativity towards Obama prove detrimental to his chances of success in November’s general election, assuming he does indeed secure the coveted nomination? To what extent is the ongoing civil war within the Democratic Party damaging its chances of successfully uniting behind one candidate, especially as John McCain has effectively had the undivided support of the GOP since early March? And so on, and so forth.

Of these, the interrelated issues caused by the protracted Clinton vs. Obama battle – i.e. the harm caused to the Party and its chances of reclaiming control of the White House later this year – are obviously the most pressing and are generating hundreds of column inches in newspapers, blogs and political journals across the world.

Balancing Hillary’s right to continue her crusade against its potentially-catastrophic ramifications for her colleagues is no easy task. Nevertheless, a firm decision on the future of her candidacy must be taken, and taken soon at that.

On the one hand, she is certainly within her rights to plug away until the notional fat lady has belted out her final line and taken a well-deserved curtain-call; on the other, of course, she will be perceived as extremely selfish if she pursues her campaign to the bitter end in the face of both mathematical probability and old-fashioned common sense.

So what to do?

Let’s briefly examine why the Clinton campaign is in such dire straits. After all, the much-hyped ‘Dream Team’ of Bill and Hillary was regarded as a hot favourite for the Democratic nomination before primary season began, especially when compared to the young and relatively-inexperienced Obama: what, then, went wrong?

For a start, Slick Willie’s presence on the campaign trail may not have been quite the boon many onlookers had initially predicted. Far from being a vote-accumulating machine, the combination of Mr. and Mrs. Clinton may have alienated prospective supporters courtesy of a garish, flashy and somewhat cocky approach to wooing them; instead of being an asset, therefore, the Clinton brand-name has seemed more like an albatross around Hillary’s neck at times.

It’s one thing to be married to a charismatic and popular ex-leader, but Bill’s enduring appeal to blue-collar America has not served to obviate his wife’s apparent shortfalls. She is still regarded by many as being cold, calculating and opportunistic and this public perception, be it right or wrong, does not look likely to change anytime soon.

Meanwhile, the way in which her husband has retreated from the frontline of her campaign speaks volumes about the extent to which she is in trouble. No-one likes to be associated with a train-wreck, after all.

Conversely, Obama came into the race as an underdog of sorts – not quite on the scale of the Republicans’ Ron Paul, of course, but still something of an outsider – and did not carry even a fraction of the baggage borne by his high-profile opponent. His bid for the Party’s endorsement did not rely upon membership of a famous family, nor did his attempts at glad-handing seem as smug and transparent as those of his arch-rival. For voters who were sick to death of the Bush dynasty and did not feel comfortable supporting another clan-based Washington institution, albeit one from the other side of the political tracks, Obama became the obvious choice.

Secondly, the issue of finances cannot be ignored. No-one in their right minds expected Hillary Rodham Clinton, of all people, to struggle when it came to raising sufficient finds for her campaign: her surname alone virtually guaranteed millions of dollars’ worth of donations from America’s wealthy liberal elite, and most onlookers felt that the combined earning power of Bill ‘n’ Hill would surpass that of any presidential bid in history. So why, at the time of writing, is her sinking ship some $20m in the red while Barack Obama’s sturdy vessel remains both afloat and in the black?

Perhaps most importantly of all, Clinton simply isn’t winning the race for the nomination. On all three fronts – pledged delegates, so-called ‘super-delegates’ and the all-important popular vote – she lags behind Obama, regardless of her increasingly-desperate claims to the contrary. Furthermore, during a rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan on May 14, former Senator John Edwards finally broke his silence on the matter of choosing a candidate to endorse; to the surprise of precisely nobody, the one-time Democratic candidate announced his support for Barack’s White House bid, eschewing an opportunity to ride to Hillary’s aid in the process and thereby adding another hole to her already-foundering craft.

Even the Republican Party seems to exude confidence in an Obama victory, with both McCain and George W. Bush pointedly attacking the presumptive Democratic nominee while all but ignoring Clinton. The latter must now be learning the truth-value of a pithy old aphorism, attributed to Oscar Wilde: "There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about."

So, then: her fame has counted against her (at least to some extent), her campaign has a credit-rating of which your average Northern Rock director would feel ashamed and, adding insult to injury, she’s just plain losing the battle. When faced with that ungodly trifecta, one needn’t consult the Ladbrokes odds in order to see that her days as a viable candidate are all but numbered.

All that having been said, and my own ill-disguised antipathy for the woman notwithstanding, one cannot help but feel a certain amount of sympathy for her plight. There’s always a chance that she, a hard-bitten political realist, may already realise that the jig is up; however, dropping out of the race with her dignity intact will not be easy, especially for such a proud matriarchal figure, and it will take delicate handling for her advisers to solve this quandary in timely fashion.

Perhaps it would have been better had she withdrawn her candidacy following that resounding victory in West Virginia, thereby allowing her to go out on a high note instead of the stalemate which is likely to take place on May 20 when, according to polling data, she is likely to win in Kentucky while Obama is favoured to claim Oregon. From there, primaries and caucuses continue until June 3, but with every passing week Clinton’s chances of success dwindle further still. What is left for her except a face-saving concession speech and the hope, narrow though it may be, that Obama may bring her on board as a potential running-mate?

This scenario, improbable though it is, would give her the chance of becoming Vice-President in November; however, she is unlikely to want to play second-fiddle to President Barack in any case and, more importantly, he will be even less inclined to seek an alliance with such a divisive figure.

It’s time, then, for Clinton to do the right thing – not just for her party, but for herself – and step aside. The Democratic Party must unite behind Barack Obama, put a stop to the childish in-fighting which has marred their nomination process and set their sights firmly upon defeating John McCain in November. Without such a cohesive and no-nonsense approach, they can all but kiss the election goodbye.

 

PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF PETER GUILDFORD. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.