I have a message for Bill and Hillary Clinton: You fought the good fight and lost. You fought the bad fight and still lost. It’s OK if you want to play out the string, take a last, not-quite-victory lap across the country, just keep it clean. Go ahead and raise a few bucks so you can repay Hillary’s campaign debts without dipping into Chelsea’s dowry. Your fellow Democrats are perfectly cool with that.

But don’t fool yourselves. Don’t think you are only one well-placed, low blow from the nomination and you owe it to your supporters to hit Barack in his. It is all over but the shouting and if you give a damn about your legacies you’ll keep the shouting down to a nice, soft goodbye.

It’s up to the party now. If the superdelegates and fixers conspire to take the nomination away from Obama it will be out of the Democratic party’s cold, dead fingers. No matter what they think about Barack’s chances come November, denying him his rightful, hard-earned prize would be a capital crime for the Democrats. It would make a mockery out of the very name of the party of Jefferson.

The Clintons can make sure that travesty never happens. I am hopeful they will. I believe Hillary already sees the handwriting on the wall, and when she lets herself read it, she’ll Do The Right Thing. I don’t think the Clintons are bad people, just driven, but, to torture the metaphor, they’re about out of gas and it’s time for them to stop before they drive us to distraction.

This has been an uncomfortable campaign season for me. I hate to hate the Clintons. That’s how I know I’m not a Republican, they love to hate the Clintons.

And who can blame them? This hick, slick-talking upstart grabs the White House from Prescott Bush’s kid, spends half his eight years tripping over his own wang, and still manages to stop the Gingrich revolution in its tracks, stain a few intern’s dresses, avoid impeachment, and leave with popularity numbers higher than George W before he found AA.

People say Bill Clinton didn’t get much accomplished in eight years, but they’re dead wrong. He played the greatest game of defense in contemporary political history.

Bill Clinton didn’t kill the Republican revolution—George W Bush did that—but he kept it in check for eight, long years. With the House and Senate and most statehouses against him, he held the line. He refused to lose. That is his strength, that is Hillary’s strength.

Now we will see if it is also their fatal weakness. Because it is time to lose, with grace, with dignity, without wounding the party they’ve done so much to bring back to health.

Bill and Hillary Clinton, you have been of great service to your country. We know that this has been a long, hard campaign and you felt the need to say and do some harsh things along the way. It’s just business, we understand. No hard feelings. All is forgiven.

Now go home.

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