Kyle Bell

Barack Obama has seen a remarkable rise as an American politician. After being in the Illinois Senate between 1998 and 2004, he won his Senate seat in 2004 and has since served as Illinois’ junior senator. He delivered the 2004 Democratic Convention Keynote Address. He managed to win the Iowa caucuses in Iowa, despite being behind in the polls there for a significant length in 2007.

Since then he has won over 30 contests, a majority of the popular vote (beating Hillary by nearly a million), and leads her in the delegate count by roughly 150, of which she will be unable to come back from. Despite all of this, the Clintons are still fighting on as if things are neck-and-neck, too close to call, a virtual tie. The fact is, Barack Obama will be our party nominee. To continue to attack him and put John McCain on a mantel of integrity and experience only weakens our chances for victory in November.

I would like to make two points. In recent weeks the Clintons (both Bill and Hillary) have gone out of their way to praise John McCain and demean Barack Obama. First Hillary raised the issue of experience, saying she and McCain were experienced enough to become commander-in-chief, but as for Obama, you would have to ask his campaign (I’ve addressed this issue in another post).
Just last week Bill said that John McCain and Hillary running against each other would mean two people running against each other who love this country and who will run on issues, implying that Obama was not patriotic.

On Friday Bill Richardson endorsed Barack Obama, saying that the negative campaigning of the Clintons needs to end and that Democrats should come together to face John McCain in the fall.. He did so despite serving twice in the Clinton administration, as an ambassador and as a Secretary of Energy. Over the weekend he was compared to Judas by James Carville, who engineered the Clinton 1992 victory over the first President Bush. Richardson’s endorsement “came right around the anniversary of the day when Judas sold out [Jesus] for 30 pieces of silver.” On Monday, Carville defended his comments on CNN, saying, “I doubt if Governor Richardson and I will be terribly close in the future.”

What’s happening is that Hillary, Bill and the Clinton’s closest advisers understand the reality they face. They are losing and are going to lose this race. Barack Obama will be the nominee, meaning that Democratic voters have and will reject them, thus ending their reign as the de facto national leaders of the Democratic Party. For nearly two decades they have called the shots, and with every Congressional and presidential election that we have lost since 2000, it has become more and more clear that the Democratic Party was more harmed than helped by the Clinton administration.

All of this rancor in the media and in private is nothing more than a final gasp of air. The Clinton machine, having been defeated from Iowa to South Carolina, Washington state to Virginia, Colorado to Wisconsin, and every place in between, is tired, frustrated, angry and bitter. A young junior senator, who just four years ago was serving in Springfield, has replaced them as the leaders of the party, and soon as the leader of the free world.