A Party United, Against Itself?

Whenever I go to my barber, Hana, we always have some friendly, although sometimes serious, conversations about politics. We were recently talking about the split in the Democratic Party thanks to the bitter race between Senator Barack Obama and Senator Hillary Clinton when Hana said:

"You know what they say now right? There are three parties. Republicans, Democrats, and the Clintons."

What might just seem as a playful political joke is definitely not one which is apparently seen in today's West Virginia exit polls. According to CNN.com:

"Almost as many of Hillary Clinton's West Virginia supporters would vote for John McCain as would for Barack Obama, exit polls show."

According to the same article,

"If Obama were the Democratic nominee, 36 percent of Clinton supporters would vote for him in the fall, the polls found.

But 35 percent said they'd cast their vote for McCain instead."

I know that a lot of Democrats say that Mrs. Clinton should stay in the race but when you start seeing numbers like that, you know it's time to close things up. After 8 years of Bush, Clinton has still somehow managed a way to separate Democrats among from each other and risk losing one of the most important presidential elections in modern history. If Clinton is as truly dedicated to keeping the Democratic Party together as she says she is she needs to realize that her candidacy is putting the whole party at risk for decomposition.

And even as she probably will win West Virginia today, she needs to come back down to planet Earth from whatever far away galaxy she has been traveling in and step out of the race and actually give the Democrats a decent chance at taking the White House back in this fall. You have to set aside personal ambitions sometimes if it's for the good of the people, especially when you have homeless veterans on the streets, rising gas prices and a potential McCain administration that would just make matters worse.