She's had two chances now - last night at her speech to supporters, and today at the AIPAC conference - and she just won't do it. She won't concede and congratulate Obama.
Some of her supporters have apparently decided to organize a Hillary for President campaign outside of the Democratic Party. Others say she "needs time" to come to grips with reality and to reconcile herself to her loss.
There has never, to my knowledge, been a primary election candidate who after losing was given time to come to grips with his or her loss. Every losing candidate, on the night the nomination is secured with the required number of delegates, calls the winner and graciously concedes.
Why is Hillary allowed to do otherwise? Why is everyone so afraid of her?
Do they really think all 17 million of her supporters will vote for John McCain in the Fall? Really?
More than half of her votes are from women, and will these women really be willing to allow conservative pro-life John McCain to nominate four conservative justices to the Supreme Court? Really?
Will these women, many of them mothers, really be willing to allow this war to continue and kill more of their sons and daughters? Really?
For what great cause are they willing to do this?
Or are they simply doing it out of spite?
Are they really that self-destructive, that masochistic?
Barack Obama has done absolutely nothing to deserve this anger, this spitefulness. No, he didn't "wait his turn," but this isn't hopscotch, this is politics, this is our future, this is the future of the world. Barack Obama truly believed he could transform this country. So did Hillary. He won. Now it is time for her to endorse him and act like a grown-up, and a true feminist who competes equally with rivals.
Obama has always been courteous and gracious to her. He has not used a kitchen sink strategy the way she did, throwing every negative thing at him she could find. He's also not the one who tried to change the rules regarding Michigan and Florida.
Obama outcampaigned her, outstrategized her, and won the nomination. It's as simple as that. If she and her followers refuse to accept that, and are willing to work to deny him victory in November, then they are not true Democrats and they might as well leave the Party now.
Furthermore, they have betrayed the woman's movement. Because the woman's movement was never about giving women an unfair advantage, or making men stand down so women could have "their turn." The woman's movement was about equality for all. I think some women have forgotten that.
