Watching Hillary Clinton campaign in these final days is painful.  It's painful for me, so it has to be painful for her supporters.

Arriana Huffington has a damning-because-of-it's-sincerity paen to the working class warrior, embracing the partial-triumph view of her defeat that is offered in this Sunday's New York times.  She says that her campaign has "forever altered the way women running for president will be viewed from here on out."

I believe a great opportunity is being passed up by Mrs. Clinton noe as she continues in her futile quest for the nomination.  Since Indiana/NC, she has railed againt people trying to push her out of the race, when there were none of those peopleamong the oppostion.  Then she went after press characterizations of the race as over, and now she taking it upon herself to explain to us how many Electoral College votes the states whose primaries she has won represent.  I don't mean to disparage the importance of counting Electoral votes, especially since election law states that only the winner of a given state's party primries are allowed to compete for that state's Elecctoral College votes.  (Right?)

So I undersatnd her wanting to help us all undertand these vagaries better, but how about this for a modest proposal:  What if, rather than extending an a stultifyingly venal five-month-old discussion of arcane Democratic Party nominating rules, she picked one or two or eight of the issues facing our country that she feels most passionately about, and tuned her campaign into a powerhouse effort to drive the direction of her party where she wants it to go substantively.

So Barack's health plan isn't universal?  Well, get him to make it so!

Don't like his views on merit pay for teachers?  Get him to cave to the NEA!

Don't like his views on role of lobyists?  Make him hire some!

Against talking with dictators unless they give in to your every demand before negotiations start?  Make him renounce his 'willing'ness to do so!  (Okay, I just coudn't think of much beyond that first point, but certainly she could--and if not, well, more later on that...)

Hillary is now occupying that sweet spot at what will be the height of her influence, no longer bound by the strictures of having to avoid any possible incident of misspeaking.  If she played her cards right, and cared to, she could plausibly stand to affect the policy priorities of a major party's presidential ticket more than any figure not appearing on it in, well, a long time I suppose.

She should ask herself then: what was all of this about?  What was it for?  Are there things she wants to see the Democratic Party do with their coming majority (of which she will be part)?  Or was she really just running primarily so that young girls of the future would be able see themselves in higher office, as the Times piece seems to suggest might be the most significant (possibly lost) opportunity that her candidacy represented? 

And if that is the case, if there wasn't an animating reason for her campaign that related to our country's needs and not who she is, she should ask herself why it needed to be her, and not one of those girls who she implies we would never elect if we didn't elect her--but who we surely will.

And if there was, is, such vision for the meaning and purpose of this two-year meatgrinder she has put herself through, let's hear about it, Hill!  You're a tragic hero in the eyes of half a party!  Make it count!