End game

For the last month or six weeks Obama has been playing a winning Rook-and-pawn end game against Clinton, and while his technique hasn't been flawless, it has been sufficient to steadily grind towards the win, despite stiff, solid defense from his opponent.

With the results from Oregon and Kentucky, and counting pledge super-delegates, Obama crept past the majority needed to claim the race, assuming no last minute surprises vis-a-vis Florida and Michigan, or a wave of super-delegates switching back to Clinton. It's not all over until the opponent resigns, but the final stage of the game is clearly at hand now.

This has brought out a spate of articles I have read in a number of places recently about the bitterness Clinton supporters feel about the result, and how many are considering not voting at all, or even voting for McCain in the general election ... to which I have just one comment.

Get over it.

First, lets be fair to Clinton herself, who has consistently urger her backers to support Obama should he win the nomination (Obama has done the same in reverse). No, this is a matter of supporters, the vast majority female, who are expressing their disappointment at how the country "wasn't ready" for a female candidate, and how "betrayed" they feel by women who somehow had the temerity to think someone might not be the best candidate just because they were of the same gender.

I don't dispute Clinton had some extra hurdles to clear by dint of her sex, but it's not like being black wasn't a drawback in some areas for Obama (take a gander at the voting patterns in West Virginia and Kentucky, for example).

I found particularly amusing the hypocrisy of the woman who spoke about people not realizing how damaging it was when Obama portrayed Clinton as representative of "the old way of politics", how that created bitterness in strong Clinton supporters, and in the same breath noted she was unlikely to vote for Obama because the White House "wasn't a place to learn on the job". Surely no Obama supporter could take those words to be derisive.

As someone noted in one of the articles, the end of a long, hard-fought race is not the time to gather the most accurate polling date. People are understandably disappointed at seeing all their efforts and hopes come to an end, Clinton more so than anyone ... I still expect, in the end, most of these folks will come to terms with matters and realize another four years of Bush policies will do nothing to help this country, and end up voting for Obama, even if they don't do so enthusiastically.

However, it does point out the importance of wrapping this up once the final primaries are done in June, and not waiting for the convention to finalize matters. Get the super-delegates committed in June, and there is enough time for the mourning/healing process to run it's course. Wait until September, and their may not be.