Clinton To Drop Out in 5, 4, 3, 2....

One.

Senator Hillary Clinton will drop her bid for the presidency.

You read it here first.

After finally relinquishing the delegate lead tonight to Senator Obama, she has no choice but to begin a slow winding up of her enormous campaign apparatus and to begin printing Hillary 2016 signs at midnight. She has lost this game on multiple fronts, on the outside, in the crowds and the vote, and, most strikingly, on the inside, where her ruthless political operatives should have thrived. She has been outmaneuvered and outwitted despite her sterling roster of elite Washington consultants and pollsters and the help of the greatest living politician on the planet, William Jefferson Clinton. She is a fundamentally flawed political pariah, a woe-as-me sap that paradoxically threatened to turn back the clock on women's liberation fifty years by her ultra-reliance on pitifully-scripted emotion and her brash husband. Her breathlessly hyped campaign yielded only modest results among an electrified democratic electorate while simultaneously staining the Clinton-brand forever. How did we come to this point? What led us to this day? Let us recount the ways that the SS Hillary now lays at the bottom of the sea:

• Hillary Clinton is fundamentally disliked

For whatever reason, whether it be her shrill, endlessly poll-tested politics or her relation to the scandal-ridden Clinton White House, or her hyper-partisan perspective of America, she entered this race with the highest negatives since.... well, since George W. Bush's last poll numbers. Her campaign would be perfectly happy playing a Kerry +1 strategy, capturing "Blue America" and ever so slightly nipping a GOPer in Ohio or Florida to take the Presidency with rail-thin margins throughout the country. Americans are rightly suspect of a candidate that wishes to continue the governmental gird-lock partisanship of the last eight years when such a regime produced the most disastrously poisoned atmosphere in the 20th century.

• The "inevitability" train was derailed
  

George W. Bush pushed his 2000 candidacy as the resumption of the throne, as if the presidency was (perhaps) a family heirloom, one which he most obviously should reclaim, rightfully, as an outsider bent on cleaning house in Washington and installing the beginning of a compassionate turn on conservatism and building majority for decades to come. He shoved party stalwarts such as John McCain, and neophytes like Steve Forbes, to the side as the establishment leaped onto his bandwagon. As recently as October, Hillary Clinton still rode the white horse toward her inevitable crowning as national savior and flag-bearer of the Democratic Party. She ignored questions about her ability to inspire the electorate, to draw independents, to offer a new direction in a country convinced it was on the wrong track, and she arrogantly assumed a George W. Bush-like disposition of smugness. The American people have a limited tolerance for arrogance, and Mrs. Clinton pushed it.

• Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton

Democracy should never resemble oligarchy. When the Clintons effectively ceded the presidency to George Bush by refusing to commit to a full-throated endorsement of Al Gore in 2000, they clearly saw Gore as a roadblock to Hillary's coronation. Setting Bush up as a pansy they could topple in 2004 seemed like a bright idea, before 9/11 that is. And now, with Bush out of the way, the field should have been clear. Keep in mind, for those born after 1980, the White House has held a Bush or a Clinton continually. That's almost thirty years, breeding considerable voter fatigue. If not for this fact, Jeb Bush would be your republican nominee.

• The War

Hillary Clinton has never apologized for her complicity in the worst strategic mistake in American Foreign Policy history. Trusting this President with an open-ended commitment to the use of force in Iraq was the wrong choice, even given the evidence at the time. It does not really matter whether you want to remove troops today or in two years, but it does matter that a leader be able to admit mistakes. George Bush does not suffer such trivialities, and neither does Mrs. Clinton.

• Ruthless and Unprincipled Politicking in a New Media Age

Mark Penn, Clinton's chief strategist and pollster, wrote a book called Microtrends, in which he describes the method of relentless categorization that he believes will deliver victory to your next product launch, or political candidacy. Certainly, marketing heads may debate the merits of such a strategy for targeting toothpaste customers, but voters are another story. Karl Rove demonstrated the use of such groupings to squeeze incredible victories in 2000, 2002 and 2004. Penn loves Rove, and so does Bill Clinton. The bare-knuckled, brutal, win-at-all-costs mentality appeals to the Clintons. Of course, the downside to such a strategy is a fractured, divided electorate and an acrid, hyper-partisan airspace. Namely, gridlock. In an election about unity and change, microtrends seems like a desperately anachronistic venture.

• Axe-Grinding

Bill Clinton made many friends during his triangulation-happy eight years at the helm. He presided over a period of peace and prosperity which saw Americans become richer and more competitive globally. Nevertheless, progressives always faulted Clinton and the centrist Democratic Leadership Council, which he chaired, for taking the Democratic Party so far to the right. Clinton co-oped Republican ideas like welfare reform and open trade. He never pushed for the progressive institutions that many liberals believed would perpetuate American leadership into the 21st century. And many never forgot this missed opportunity. Democrats of all stripes have great reason to sink Hillary's campaign in a vengeful strike at Bill's betrayal. As a result, the knives are out.

• The Death of Conservatism
  

Conservatism's great promise throughout the 20th century was limited government, strong national defense and social traditionalism. Unfortunately, as a result of the rise of the Neo-conservatives (really, traditional liberal or imperialistic political thought) from the Project for a New American Century and the Bush regime, the conservative coalition collapsed. Hillary Clinton was deftly prepared and uniquely suited to cobble together this waning movement into an opposing electoral force. Economic, fiscal conservatives are largely aghast at the Bush regime's big-government philosophy. From the bloated No-Child Left Behind Act to the creation of an entirely new Federal Bureaucracy(Department of Homeland Security) If not for the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2002, Bush would have nothing to show for his supposed fiscal modesty. Those interested in limited government cannot at all be pleased with the constant and dedicated invasion of Civil Liberties (avoidance of FISA, Habeas Corpus, Domestic Intelligence Expansion) despite being in the name of national security, nor his liberal stance toward the expansion of amnesty for illegal immigrants. And lastly, the compassionate, social conservative that slipped into office in 2000 has hardly pleased the flock with the approval of torture, the very un-Christian waging of endless war abroad, nor the disgraceful manner with which he ignored American citizens as the floodwaters raged in Louisiana. By most any measure, Bush 43's tenure has been a momentous failure and a permanent blow to the conservative front first formed by Barry Goldwater in the wake of his defeat in 1964. All this could be forgotten if the right's "Great Satan" would kindly be on the ballot in November.

Fortunately for the American people, it seems as if conservatism's one remaining unifying factor, Mrs. Clinton, will be sitting on the sidelines this November. And this is a very good thing. While she provides the competent leadership we've lacked for the last eight years, she fails on most every other point. She represents all the things we need to put in our past. And that is why we must wish her luck in her second full term as Senator from her adopted state of New York.