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Democrats to Hillary...quit now. Wink.Wink.

Everybody but Rush Limbaugh seems to want Hillary Clinton to quit the race for the Democratic nomination for President. Limbaugh has been running what he calls “Operation Chaos”. The thinking behind his insurgent campaign is the longer Hillary stays in the race, the more time and money Barak Obama has to spend running against her and the less he has to strengthen his position against John McCain.

But consider this “inside baseball” scenario. Hillary stays in…and campaigns hard but not against Obama. She pounds McCain on healthcare and the economy while Obama pounds him on the war and his ties to the Bush administration. If you’ve watched closely since North Carolina and Indiana you may have seen signs of this Democratic “Operation Chaos” in action. Both the Democrats have sharpened their focus on McCain and only obliquely attacked each other.

Nobody is better at political math than Bill and Hilary Clinton, the numbers for her nomination aren’t there and they know it. If she were really damaging the Democratic effort by running a largely redirected campaign the calls for her to quit would be loud and unambiguous…but that’s not the case.

In the meantime, Democratic voter registration continues to explode and interest in the race is at an all-time high. How many stories do you hear or read daily about McCain, and how many about Clinton-Obama? The media can’t resist a horserace, and this is the one they’ll focus on.

What about the cost? Isn’t the Clinton campaign deeply in debt including 11-million of their own money? Please…Bill and Hillary have that much in their cookie jar. And there is already talk of the Obama campaign helping with her debt. Not only that, in this new “soft” phase of the campaign she can continue to raise money, but control spending (since …except for the occasional softball lobbed at Barak… she’s only attacking McCain). There’s no need for as many expensive TV ads in the remaining primaries. She’ll do well in those anyway and get plenty of local and national coverage for free.

Then when the time is right (after she’s saved face by winning a few meaningless primaries), the two campaigns marry in a big love fest promising no hard feelings and a united fight to regain the White  House (this will happen on a Monday so the pundits can talk about the possibility the day before…and insuring a full week of coverage and the Sunday shows the next week). Hillary delivers her women and working class whites to Barak to join his African-American, young and urban voters...and the real fight in engaged.

Finally…there will be no “dream-ticket” of Obama-Clinton. There are many more negatives than positives with that scenario but that’s a blog for another time.