Ask Not for Whom the Gong Tolls

Hillary Clinton ramped up her rhetoric over the weekend after seeming to end the debate in Austin, Texas, on a note of reconciliation and, some presumed, resignation.

The question on many minds this morning: when will Mrs. Clinton bow out? I’m guessing it’ll take one of those long, long hooks used to drag people off the Vaudeville stage and The Gong Show.

In columns published today, Jonathan Alter of the left and Robert Novak of the right both address Clinton’s impending departure from the race. In “Hillary Should Get Out Now,” Alter makes a compelling case: Mrs. Clinton can either stubbornly outstay her welcome, or bow out gracefully in a way that would help the Democratic Party and her future electability. In “Someone in the Democratic Party needs to tell Hillary it’s over,” Novak characteristically relies on cold, hard logic: she can’t beat Obama, she can’t beat McCain, and by hanging on she’s hurting Obama’s chance to beat McCain. Plus, Novak notes, the $5 million dollar loan she made to her own campaign came from a joint account, bringing into play all of her and her husband’s financial dealings (the Clintons have yet to make their tax returns public…)

Maybe it’s just the desparation of a campaign in its last throes, but Hillary has been hitting Obama hard on the issue of plagiarism. The problem for Hillary is that the quote in question actually included phrases so well-known that there’s no need to attribute them: “I have a dream,” “We hold these truths to be self-evident,” and “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.” In addition, the fact that Deval Patrick had used these same quotes in the same way is irrelevant; Patrick not only works on Obama’s campaign, but gave the Senator permission to use the passage.

Ask not for whom the gong tolls; it tolls for Hillary.

Newsprism.com

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