“Sanity may be madness but the maddest of all is to see life as it is and not as it should be.” – Don Quixote
The combination of a crushing loss in North Carolina and a squeaker win in Indiana last night has buried any argument the Clinton campaign can make that the tide is turning in her favor. Very late on Tuesday night, Hillary Clinton’s campaign made the announcement that the candidate had cancelled all her scheduled events for Wednesday. The media’s reaction to this was swift: when a candidate cancels events after a key loss, that means the campaign is coming to and end.
Alas, Clinton is not quitting. The event schedule was quickly rewritten to include a campaign stop in West Virginia today. The question Hillary now needs to ask herself is, “Do I want to be Dennis Kucinich?”
In the 2004 Democratic contest, John Kerry wrapped up the nomination in early March, and the DNC began referring to him as the nominee. This however didn’t stop Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich from continuing to campaign for the nomination for another three months, right up until the Convention. Now, Dennis is a fine man. If he wants to continue to make appearances and talk about things he considers important, that’s just dandy. Sometimes a person who refuses to accept defeat can also be seen as brave and tenacious. After all, everyone, absolutely everyone, told Harry Truman in 1948 that he could not win the Presidency.
Unfortunately for Dennis, people weren’t too sure that he was simply refusing to be defeated so much as he was refusing to accept, or possibly to comprehend, reality. His continued bid for the nomination reminded people more of Don Quixote than it did Truman. The adjective quixotic is defined as, “Caught up in the romance of noble deeds and the pursuit of unreachable goals; idealistic without regard to practicality.” Yep, that’s Dennis all right. And if Hillary refuses to quit very soon, people will also be describing her candidacy in terms of tilting at windmills. That’s not where she wants to be if she wants to continue to be taken seriously on the American political stage.
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1 comment:
It'll all be over by the end of the month.
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