Many Clinton supporters find the current attempts to muscle her out of the race despicable. Maybe now is the time for Obama to take one for the team and accept her offer of the VP slot. It is the position he is better qualified for, would end a situation that is supposedly hurting the party, and would put him in a better position to run next time. Clinton has no “next time,” so it makes more sense for Obama to be the one to step aside.

(1) Which "team," exactly, would Obama allegedly be "taking one for" were he to concede his widely acknowledged front-runner status and deign to accept a Vice-Presidential offer from the candidate he's outpaced in terms of delegates since the very first contest of this primary? Surely not the Democratic Party -- again, insofar as he's won more votes, more delegates, and more contests than his opponent. Surely not "progressives" insofar as both campaigns have readily conceded that both Senators are coming from highly comparable policy positions. The only conceivable "team" DS is referencing is the Clinton Campaign itself, and the fact this poster cannot muster the courage to articulate this realization only serves to underscore the delusional duplicity at work here. What, pray tell, does Senator Obama owe the Clinton family? Just about every arguably objective metric suggests that Obama would be a far stronger candidate in the general election. This primary season has been remarkable in many respects, but there's something awfully telling about the fact that, for instance, the Republicans crossing over to vote for Senator Clinton are doing so with malicious intent at the behest of that drug-addled gasbag Rush Limbaugh while those who cross over for Senator Obama do so because they genuinely want to see him elected. Those with brains are encouraged to draw their own conclusions, here. The rest of you are free to keep spitting Penn and Rove's talking points.

(2) Setting aside the fact this poster fails (in the excerpt provided by Josh) to present a single reason why Obama is ostensibly more qualified to be Vice-President than President, the record suggests that, if anything, Obama is eminently more qualified than Senator Clinton to be President. While he may not have dodged intentionally imaginary sniper fire in Bosnia, Obama's personal, professional, academic and political trackrecords all suggest that he is the far more qualified candidate in this race. Coupled with the fact (see above) that he has bested Senator Clinton in the primary contests to-date by virtue of running a vastly superior campaign means that any reasonable and charitable observer would be -- at best -- left scratching their heads at the suggestion that Obama ought accept a VP spot on a Clinton ticket. Reading one's two-term tenure as First Lady as presidential "experience" or "qualification" leads to the nauseating conclusion that Laura Bush is qualified to be Commander-in-Chief. I highly doubt any Democrat would agree with that conclusion, Clinton-backer or otherwise. Why else, really, would Senator Clinton feel obligated to exaggerate, misrepresent, indeed distort her resume as First Lady? It's because she, more than anyone, knows that the checks drafted by her primary rhetoric simply can't be cashed by the bank of reality. Her multiple obfuscations of her record on the campaign trail only serve to underscore this point. I'm no political genius, but I ceratinly would have refrained from advising anyone, and certainly not Clinton, to frame their entire campaign around the theme of "experience" before knowing damn sure that said candidate had the genuine experience to back up so bold a claim when running against a decorated veteran with decades of Washington experience.

(3) While the original poster seems reluctant to concede that the current situation is hurting the party, there is simply no doubt that the only thing hurting the party at this point is the manner in which the Clinton campaign has deliberately chosen to attack a fellow Democrat. Examples abound, but all I need invoke is the deal-breaking Clintonian endorsement of our own damn opponent as more qualified to be commander-in-chief. There's knee-capping and then there's "knee-capping," but to explicitly suggest that the opposition party's nominee is more qualified than one's own fellow Democrat is a risible offense no figure-skating analogy could fully capture. This isn't Tonya Harding, folks; indeed, this is the political equivalent of a suicide bombing (i.e., "If I can't have it, then I'll make damn sure my fellow Democrat won't have it either!"). To deliberately set out to handicap the chances of the presumptive nominee of your very own party in light of the fact that you failed to secure a legal and honorable path to the nomination on your own merits is simply disgraceful. The ease with which the Clinton campaign and its surrogate-supporters have turned to echoing right-wing talking points would be disturbing if it weren't so sadly predictable at this point. Bill Clinton on Rush Limbaugh? Hillary Clinton slandering her Democratic colleague via Richard Scaife's joke of a news-rag? It's the Bush policy of "with-us-or-against-us" being bluntly applied without conscience to a promising member of one's own party. A member, I should add, who has been beating her since Day One of the Democratic primary season.

(4) I'm unsure why the poster believes Clinton "has no next time," but I also fail to grasp why any of us who care about the future of the party and the future of our nation should believe this is in any way relevant. I'm sorry Clinton squandered her perceived window of opportunity to run for president, but why in God's name is that any of our concern?