Cezary Salad

As the old addage reminds us, in politics, mud thrown is ground lost.

The trouble with this election season for the Democrats is that it’s hard to figure out whose ground is being sacrificed: that of Sen. Clinton or the party’s chances in November?

Increasingly, Democratic Superdelegates are beginning to point the finger at Sen. Clinton. That is why over the past few days Sen. Hillary Clinton has heard increasing calls from party Superdelegates to step out of the race - most poignantly (and bluntly) from Sen. Patrick Leahy, (D-VT).

Superdelegates like Leahy have reason to be nervous. Granted, polls in this primary season have been about as prescient as a broken compass , but witness Sen. John McCain’s gradually increasing strength in both an Obama-McCain match-up or a Hillary-McCain match-up. Now, you can make like Cheney and say, “So?” to the wisdom of polls, but chances are that if you’re Democratic Superdelegate, it’s not that easy.

Hence the growing pressure for the Democratic primary to come to a conclusion, with survival of the fittest favoring Sen. Clinton - who is down in the delegate count, popular vote, number of states won and (the real primary?) fundraising - to drop out.

This weekend, Sen. Clinton tried to put an end to all this chatter by insisting that she is in it for the long haul - be it through the last primary in June or the convention in August: “I think I believe that a spirited contest is good for the Democratic Party and will strengthen our eventual nominee,” she said, as quoted by Jeff Zeleny of The Times.

Sprited? It certainly will be. Good for the party? Not in the least.

Under a two-party system, there are two scenarios under which Sen. Clinton’s strategy of staying in it for the long haul while throwing the “kitchen sink” at the frontrunner could indeed be advantageous or at least do no harm to the party and the eventual nominee. First, so long as one party is still squabbling over its nominee, it is ok for the other to do the same without losing the key advantage of time. Secondly, even if one party has already settled on its nominee, a spirited contest for the nomination within the other party can still be a good thing - long as there are vital policy differences between the candidates that need to be settled before the general election planks are put in place.

The trouble for Sen. Clinton is that neither of the above is the case - and hence the danger to Democratic prospects for the White House from her decision to continue her campaign no matter what.

The danger from the absence of the first scenario is self-evident. If it is indeed true that 9 out of the last 10 U.S. presidential contests have been won by the party that selected its nominee first (which may be nothing more than a reflection of incumbents’ advantage - nothing new), then Sen. McCain could be the luckiest man in American politics right now. With his general election campaign de facto beginning on March 4th and Democrats’ primary battle going on until June and possibly until August, Sen. McCain has a crucial 4-6 month head start in spreading his message - as he did last Friday with his first general election campaign ad - coalescing his party’s support, introducing himself to voters and - should the father of McCain-Feingold opt out of public funding in the general election - fundraising.

Moreover, absent strong and clear policy distinctions between Sens. Clinton and Obama, Sen. McCain will not only get the advantages of time but also extra bounce from the personal attacks and negativity that will surely continue to surface on the Democratic side. Let’s face it: the Democratic primary is no longer about the issues or the policy distinctions between the candidates. It was earlier, when the field of candidates was larger. But the final two agree either explicitly or in principle - with minor variations, such as the use of mandates in health care - on so much of their policies that discussing issues and policies doesn’t really help the voters see a sharp contrast between them.

But in absence of that, character and integrity take the lead as the most important distinctions between the candidates that the voters will use to decide in the voting booth. Naturally, then, what is Sen. Clinton to do but throw mud - and lots of it - and hope that some of it sticks and begin to stink? Whether it be charges of plagiarism, childhood presidential ambitions, or insinuations by campaign subordinates that Sen. Obama is a Muslim, if the Democratic primary goes on for two or three more months, this is likely to be only the beginning for the mudslinging. It is going to get very dirty, very fast.

Granted, thus far Sen. Clinton has paid for her mudslinging (kitchen sink throwing?) with increased negative ratings. But her ground isn’t the only thing at play here; as more Democratic Superdelegates will undoubtedly come to realize, the longer she goes on, the less ground they have beneath their feet come November.