Watching Hillary Clinton’s performance this week is like rubber-necking a 20-car pile up. It’s gruesome to look at, but you just can’t take your eyes off of it. If the stakes weren’t so damned important, it would almost be fascinating to watch Hillary Clinton committing political suicide in front of our very eyes.

Hillary’s ambition has taken on Shakespearean proportions.

Like Caesar, her ambition is a grievous fault and, like Caesar, she is likely to answer for it in a most grievous manner. It should be sad to see a true public servant like Hillary implode the way she has, but her act of political suicide is not a victimless crime.

Her venom and vitriol won’t just spell the end of her political career, it may spell the end for any real hope of a Democratic Party victory in November. As she’s going down, she’s trying to drag the whole party with her.

Following her resounding defeat in North Carolina and her razor-thin victory in Indiana, Clinton should have had the decency to pull out of the race. The numbers don’t lie. Barack Obama is going to be the party’s nominee.

But backed into her proverbial political corner, Clinton pulled out the race card (yet again) and is using it in her last desperate attempt to steal the nomination. Earlier in the campaign, Hillary has made subtle racial digs at Obama (He’s not a Muslim, “as far as I know”).

Now, any hint of subtlety is gone.

I’m sure, by now, you’ve heard Hillary’s remarks to the Associated Press, but they are worth repeating:

“I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on. There was just an AP article posted that found how Sen. Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me. There’s a pattern emerging here.”

Nothing subtle there. To paraphrase Hillary:

America is a country filled with old, racist, hard-working, uneducated men. They are the backbone of this country. They are the heart of the electorate. They are not about to vote for any Black man, let alone an uppity, coke snorting, Harvard-educated elitist with ties to the radical Black community.

Who do you want as your nominee, the candidate that appeals to our highest ideals or the one that appeals to the lowest common denominator? Vote for hate and fear… because it’s the expedient thing to do. Vote for me!

This is not what the Democratic Party is supposed to be about. This is about one woman’s blind ambition. Every day she remains in the race, every day she has a mathematical chance of winning, is another day where the Democratic Party suffers a black eye.

That’s why the race must end today.

The power to end the race is in the hands of the Superdelegates. Hillary’s quote should have provided all of the motivation and ammunition they needed to get off the fence. By committing, in huge numbers, for Obama, the Superdelegates can immediately end the primary, giving Obama all the votes he needs for an incontestable victory.

This will finally put an end to the debacle that has been the Clinton candidacy and put the Democratic Party back on track for November.

Just as important, it will send a message to America. It is a message of appealing to our highest ideals. More than just a message about a hope for a better America, the Obama presidency is about a path to a better America.