Hillary Clinton‘s rationale for staying in the race is that she believes she has a better chance than Obama to beat McCain:
I’d get out if I believed he [Sen. Obama] had a better chance to win than I do.
Is there really no one who can sit her down and explain to her that whether or not she has a better chance of beating McCain is irrelevant if she can’t first beat Obama? And she can’t. That’s why it’s over.
Just consider Clinton’s recipe for beating Obama:
In an effort to keep financial backers in the tent, Sen. Clinton hosted them at a cocktail party at her Washington, D.C., residence last week. When she came downstairs to greet the 50 or so guests, Sen. Clinton laid out how she could still win the nomination: Beat Sen. Obama in the popular vote, then persuade the superdelegates to vote for her on the theory that she would be better able to beat Sen. McCain in November.
How does she beat Obama in the popular vote? By stamping her foot, and insisting that Michigan and Florida jolly well count. And holding her breath until she turns blue.
*** Update, 7:35 am ***
Josh Marshall has a succinct exposition of how much suspension-of-disbelief it takes to buy Hillary’s popular vote argument:
Even if you change the rules and fully seat Michaigan (sic) and Florida and count them for the popular vote totals and don’t count any portion of the Michigan “uncommitted” (which were understood a the (sic) to be for Obama) vote for Obama, Hillary is still behind in the popular vote total. The only way she moves ahead in popular vote is if you do all that and don’t count four of the caucus states.
Pathetic is not the word. The only thing more pathetic than the Hillary campaign making this argument is that so many people are buying it.
Just to put the Clinton strategy in perspective, the idea seems to be that if you take something that does not uniquely comport with the truth, and you repeat it enough times, and have it repeated enough times by your loyalists and enablers, why, then Americans will start to believe it. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?