If you haven't been living under a rock over the past few months, you know that Hillary Clinton has been taken a serious beating from the mainstream media and the liberal blogosphere because she has stayed in the race despite overwhelming odds.

A fairly typical heated response from an Obama supporter was Andrew Sullivan's. On June 3 he wrote:

The speech tonight was a remarkable one for a candidate who has lost the nomination, though not remarkable for a Clinton. It was an assertion that she had won the nomination and a refusal to concede anything to her opponent. Classless, graceless, shameless, relentless. Pure Clinton.

Now -- only about 24 hours after Obama was projected the winner of the Democratic primary by the AP and all the major news networks -- the Clinton campaign has made its suspension official, and it has also said it will keep its promise to endorse Obama.

It is time for Democrats to take a deep breath, calm down, and be grateful that the process is coming to a close. I think Ross Douthat of The Atlantic set exactly the right tone:

It would probably been better for the party if Hillary had conceded defeat somewhat earlier ... But I think that once a few months have gone by, at least some of outrage that Hillary Clinton has generated among liberal pundits by campaigning to the bitter end in a race that she ended up losing by just over a hundred pledged delegates and roughly half a percent of the popular vote will seem, in hindsight, faintly hysterical.

Tom Bevan also presents a considered, reasoned reaction to Clinton's decision. He writes:

Clinton clearly could have been more gracious on Tuesday night in acknowledging Obama's achievement, and she could have used softer language in describing her campaign. On the other hand, as a candidate who spent the better part of two years campaigning and who won 18 million votes across the country fighting her way to what was for all intents and purposes a tie, she also had ample justification for touting her accomplishments and for not conceding immediately on Tuesday night - despite what others may have wanted.

Sullivan, however, is not taking back anything he's said. He digs in deeper, responding to Devan:

And historically, losing candidates concede after the last primary has delivered an insurmountable victory to his or her opponent - and usually long before. Those were the rules the Clintons set for Jerry Brown back in 1992; they are rules everyone else follows. I see no reason to acquiesce to the delusions and pathologies of Clinton entitlement. 

However, the facts are not on Sullivan's side. History teaches that Obama supporters who find themselves angry with Clinton for staying in the race have lost perspective.

It's true that many presidential candidates drop out when it seems their odds of winning are insurmountable (think Joe Biden, Chris Dodd, Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney, etc.) But at least since Super Tuesday, it has been obvious that the Obama v. Clinton contest was altogether in a separate category.

Most careful watchers of the race have predicted for several months that neither Obama nor Clinton would have enough pledged delegate votes to "go over the top" and secure enough delegates to win the nomination. For this scenario, there is only one close historical analogy: 1984's race between Walter Mondale and Gary Hart.

Like 2008, the 1984 race featured two Democratic frontrunners who finished the primary season without either candidate securing enough delegates to win outright. Therefore, vice president Mondale, leading in the pledged delegate count, worked the phones for superdelegate support.

Meanwhile, Hart, Mondale's opponent, argued that superdelegates should overturn the results of the primaries because he was the superior candidate. He argued that polls showed him the superior general election candidate and that he won late primary successes -- blowouts in big states like California -- that he should be the nominee.

Of course, Hart's arguments failed to win over the superdelegates. Mondale won the Democratic nomination with the help of a pledged delegate plurality and a few dozen superdelegates.

So, students of history, when did Hart drop out of the race? After Mondale named himself the victor, Hart challenged: “Welcome to overtime. It is not over.”

In fact, Hart took his race for the White House all the way to the Democratic convention in San Francisco. On June 3, 2008, Hart told the New York Observer:

“I think what I really was motivated by was the overwhelming sense of my delegates that they had worked very hard—some of them for a year or a year and a half or more—and that they wanted me to be nominated and to demonstrate their support even if I could not get the nomination,” Mr. Hart said.

Thus, as any objective observer would remark, it seems there are some key differences between 1984 and 2004: First, unlike Hart, Clinton faced tremendous pressure from the media, party elders, DNC officials, not to mention relentless criticism by the liberal blogosphere, to surrender early. Second, unlike Hart, Clinton has not responded by forcing the contest into "overtime".

By historical standards, Clinton has ended her campaign speedily. This is not to deny that she is certainly due for criticism for many other reasons -- for example, by continuing to wage certain "negative attacks" against Obama even as her chances seemed hopeless. But critics who say she overstayed her welcome in the race are subjecting her to historically unprecedented criticism.
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Just like this year, neither candidate had accumulated enough pledged delegates during the primary season to claim an outright delegate majority. Thus, it fell to the superdelegates—some 568 of them back in ’84, the first year such a species existed—to put one of them over the top.

But again, just like today, their commitments were flexible; they could pledge themselves to one candidate and flip to the other for any reason at any time, right up until the convention roll call. And, as with Hillary Clinton and Michigan in recent days, Mr. Hart was threatening to challenge the seating of bunches of Mondale delegates over a dispute that had simmered for much of the campaign.

And so, just after Mr. Mondale staked his claim in St. Paul, Mr. Hart made his own declaration from Los Angeles: “Welcome to overtime. It is not over.”

Hart pressed his campaign all the way to the Democratic convention in San Francisco. On June 3, he said:

“I think what I really was motivated by was the overwhelming sense of my delegates that they had worked very hard—some of them for a year or a year and a half or more—and that they wanted me to be nominated and to demonstrate their support even if I could not get the nomination,” Mr. Hart said.

Thus, there are two major differences between Hart's campaign and Clinton's campaign: First, Clinton faced far more pressure to drop out of the race before the end of the primaries or the convention. Second, in the end, Clinton has not declared that the game will continue into "overtime".

In short, criticism that Clinton overstayed her welcome in the race is historically unprecedented. Angry Obama supporters -- and even many embarrassed Clinton supporters -- have good cause to reconsider their hostility.

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