Davos Newbies

Brilliant analysis of the Clinton campaign and its supporters by RJ Eskow on Huffington Post:

And regardless of which candidate you support, something beautiful was happening in American politics for the first time: An African American was running for President and his race was not an issue. It was a truly postracial campaign. The Clintons killed that – methodically and deliberately – to further their increasingly long-shot ambitions.

Several weeks ago I told a friend who is a committed Clinton supporter that the race for the nomination was “all over bar the shouting”. I still believe that, but I had never anticipated just how much shouting there would be. Matt Yglesias, as so often, gets it exactly right:

Because of the fact that Bill and Hillary Clinton and their close associates have been the leaders of the Democratic Party for so long at this point, they’ve been able to take a remarkably slender thread of hope and spin it into a full-fledged horse race. At this point, though, they’re perpetrating something of a fraud on their many grassroots supporters who continue to invest money, time, and energy in an already-failed enterprise.

The bottom line, however, is that before the March primaries, Clinton looked doomed unless she could make up major ground in March. With all the March results in, Clinton hasn’t made up any ground at all. That means she’s doomed. The popular vote victory in the Texas primary is a nice moral victory for Clinton to console herself with, but the overall results just didn’t create the kind of delegate count she needed to be viable.