One way to look at Hillary's refusal to concede to Obama, and her determination to fight on even though she has no real chance of getting the nomination, is through the prism of grief.
As Elizabeth Kubler-Ross taught us several decades ago, grief is a process that involves several stages, each of which can overlap with the others and occur in any order.
The stages include denial, anger, bargaining, sadness or depression, and finally resolution.
When this campaign season began, Hillary thought the nomination would easily be hers. Her strategy was to wrap things up by Super Tuesday (in early February) and glide to the convention in August as the queen-in-waiting. None of the candidates could pose a real threat to her, she thought. Then Obama's candidacy caught fire, and he won 11 contests in a row, soaring to a lead of 150 delegates. Since then, she has been unable to narrow that gap, even with wins in Texas and Ohio.
Although the final act has not been played, and we do not know for sure that Obama will be the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton has in front of her a stark reality: Obama is favored to win. So her long held dream of being the first woman president is dying. Hence, the grief analogy.
At first, Hillary was in denial. There was no way this upstart could defeat her. Her loss in the first caucus in Iowa was merely a blip, a mistake, erased by her victory in New Hampshire. Then she won Nevada and all seemed on track, until South Carolina showed her that she was losing the African American vote. This would be disastrous for her, so while on the outside she and her husband continued to deny reality, underneath there was anger. This was most obvious in Bill Clinton's behavior: yelling at reporters and making subtle racist comments: calling Obama's record on the Iraq War "a fairy tale" and comparing his win to that of Jesse Jackson.
While Hillary, Bill and their supporters are still in some denial, and still allow their anger to break through from time to time, they have entered the third stage of grief: bargaining. Thus we hear all kinds of scenarios by which they expect to win: the superdelegates must deny Obama the nomination because he is too flawed or because she won the big states, the blue states, or the most populous states; Florida and Michigan must have their votes counted even though they violated the rules which would disallow those votes; pledged delegates must follow their own conscience and not the will of the people who sent them to the convention. Now, some of Hillary's big donors have sent a threatening letter to Nancy Pelosi, demanding that she tell superdelegates to vote their conscience or they will take their ball and bat and go home. This is bargaining at its most brutal, and it is all because at some unconscious level, Hillary and her supporters know the truth: her campaign is dying, her dreams are dying, her hopes are dying.
Bargaining is all they have left. Denial no longer works and anger is counterproductive. Bargaining is all that keeps them from falling into the abyss of sadness and depression. So in that respect it makes a certain kind of sense, even though it is destructive.
I don't think it will be too long before Hillary and Co. will have to give up the bargaining and accept the inevitable sadness and grief that follows. It will be tough to take, tough to endure, and tough to go on when the dream dies. But the one good thing about grief is that over time there is resolution. The person who must grieve learns to live with the pain, and even create something new and positive from it. Look at Jimmy Carter's amazing humanitarian work, begun only after he lost a bid for his second term.
Hillary can do enormous good once she allows herself to experience the pain of her loss, once she acknowledges that she is not the only person in this country who could be a great president. Once she accepts that Obama is going to be the nominee, once she allows herself to see how great he could be with enough support and help from people like her and her husband, she will be at peace.
Hillary Clinton is a brilliant woman and can continue on as a great senator or even governor if that is what she chooses. She can join her husband in his philanthropic work, start a think tank or even accept a cabinet position in an Obama administration. Letting go is painful, difficult, maybe even excruciating, but once one is courageous and gracious enough to do it, and to not go down a road of bitterness, much good can come of it.
Hillary can postpone the fourth stage of grief for a long time, but doing so will hurt the party and the eventual nominee. It will also hurt her. It's time for her to face the inevitable, allow herself some time to heal and throw her support behind an amazing candidate. Only then will she achieve true resolution and true statesmanship. She still has a tremendous role to play in electing our next president and contributing to our country, but first she has to move past the bargaining stage so she can finish the work of grieving.
