Why Hillary Should Withdraw

A fellow liberal blogger gives 11 very good reasons. An excerpt:

• Her experience argument is bogus. Even if it were true, historically, experience is a poor predictor of presidential success. Further, anyone who claims to be prepared to be president “from day one” is lying - because no experience can prepare you for the presidency.

• Her most successful and most-used tactic against Barack Obama in the primaries and caucuses - suppressing voter turnout - will ensure her loss in the general election as it alienates many of those who she most needs to appeal to - younger voters (under 55), black voters, and swing voters. The Clintons have also introduced identity politics into the primary - and have tried to encourage racial polarization, especially between Latinos and blacks. The Clintons are running a campaign very different from most primary campaigns - they are attacking Obama with a ferocity usually reserved for attacking Republicans in the general election. In an election that splits the country roughly 50/50, Hillary can’t afford to lose anyone. At the rate she is going now, she won’t be able to put together a winning coalition.

• If Hillary Clinton wins, her success will become a lesson in how women should achieve power: marry well; put up with any humiliations your husband throws at you, and then, maybe, if you fight dirty, and ask your husband to run your campaign, you might be able to ride his coattails to your “own” political success.

Her three most significant political acts: botching health care reform and setting it back for a generation; deciding to stonewall independent investigators, Congress, and the press on Whitewater, and voting for war with Iraq.

• The Democratic Party has a once-in-a-generation opportunity to re-align the country and reinvigorate liberalism and America. Hillary Clinton has shown no interest in seizing this opportunity or any capacity to rally Americans to a broad consensus. She remains a highly polarizing figure. Her winning strategy does not involve winning a significant majority but eking out a 51% win by micro-targeting, niche marketing, and espousing incremental targeted policies - all working off of a broadly Republican status quo.

• The Clintons are fundamentally and irredeemably corrupt. And we don’t need to have a Clinton dynstasty to rival the Bush dynasty.

• Bonus reason: George W. Bush, and some number of his supporters, see her as the best candidate to protect the Bush legacy of torture, preemptive war, and executive overreach.

Read the whole thing, it's great.