Clinton's end: time to yield and unify

Dogged, determined Sen. Hillary Clinton smacked into turbulence somewhere over Indiana. In the incongruous rules of politics, she won the state narrowly but lost the battle for the nomination.

It is time for Clinton to do something she is not wired to do: yield the nomination to Sen. Barack Obama, the candidate with the best chance to win and unify Democrats.Clinton is not campaigning to be the Energizer Bunny, which, against all odds, keeps mechanically bobbing forward and backward because, darn it, the batteries still work. She has talked in recent days about being a fighter. Fighters may never give in, but sophisticated leaders do.

There comes a time to acknowledge the electoral math and step aside. Hillary cannot reach the required number of delegates without ripping the Democratic Party into pieces in a fight over delegates from Florida and Michigan. Those delegates may not be seated at the convention because their states violated the calendar for staging primaries.

If Clinton presses on to the bitter end, as is her misguided right to do, she will carry the burden of ruining the Democrats' best chance in years to change Washington, D.C., end the war in Iraq and move the country forward internationally and domestically.

In the longest nominating process on Planet Earth, it is hard to say one state's results are more important than another's. When looking for an end point, however, we know it when we see it. Clinton has tenaciously exhausted her options.

Nowhere is this more glaring than in Clinton's fundraising efforts. She revealed this week she loaned her campaign $6 million more in recent weeks, on top of an earlier $5 million loan. Campaign cash is the clearest sign of others' confidence in a candidacy.

Clinton's campaign has become an endurance contest in which she waits for Obama to make mistakes. He has obliged.

Superdelegates will decide this for her if Clinton cannot make the grand gesture herself.

Obama is better-suited to heal the party, conclude the war in Iraq, improve America's image worldwide, and get down to deep details in health care and education.

Clinton's campaign is over. She is perhaps the last to know.