Reasons not to leave

Byron York:

If the Democratic presidential race were a runaway, if Barack Obama were, say, 1,500 delegates ahead of Hillary Clinton, then there would likely not be so many anguished cries for Clinton to quit the race.

Just look at 1992. Bill Clinton is fond of saying he didn’t wrap up the Democratic nomination until June 2 of that year, when he won the California primary. That’s technically true, but Clinton was the clear winner long before that. Nevertheless, former California Gov. Jerry Brown stubbornly stayed in the race, even though going into June 2, he had 388 delegates to Clinton’s 2,059. (Clinton’s total was, at the time, 86 short of locking up the nomination.)

Brown hadn’t been taken seriously since losing the New York primary on April 7, but he kept at it. His campaign became so quixotic that in late May, during a visit to an elementary school in South Central Los Angeles, a nine year-old asked him, “What do you plan to do to get more delegates to win this campaign?” “That’s a very good question,” Brown answered, according to an Associated Press report. “What do you think we should do?”

There was no good answer, but who cared? Brown could stay in as long as he liked because his presence didn’t really matter. But Hillary Clinton’s campaign, which is not only not 1,500 delegates behind Barack Obama but might, by some reckoning, catch up with him in the popular vote total — and in any event remains excruciatingly close to Obama in all measures — is different. Obama’s supporters, in the campaign, in the Democratic party, and in the press are desperate for her to leave the race precisely because her support is so substantial; her continued presence is a daily reminder of how profoundly divided the party is at this moment.

Her landslide 67-26 victory over Obama in West Virginia — she won by 147,410 votes — won’t change that situation. The oft-repeated fact that no Democrat since 1916 has won the White House without winning West Virginia won’t change it, either. But together, those two facts show just how far Democrats have ventured into uncharted territory this year. If Obama is to win the White House, he’ll have to do it in a brand-new way, winning states that Democrats haven’t won lately with diminished support in states that have been important to Democratic victories in the past. Clinton’s campaign reminds Democrats of that, and it makes some of them nervous.

...

It is the most impressive win in a "contested" race this year. It was so lopsided that Obama did't bother to do much. The cross the board defeat of 41 points for the person everyone else is saying is the nominee has to be embarrassing. It also has to give Hillary hope. She may get those kind of numbers in Kentucky too. If she does, Obama is going to look even weaker going into the convention. If I were her, I wouldn't quit either.