After this I'm done talking about it. I swear.

Just found two great articles published in the aftermath of Senator Clinton's concession speech. One, from the Daily Kos, considers that infamous Hillary Nutcracker and the utter lack of criticism its casual sexism received in media circles (maybe in light of yesterday's post, because everyone was too busy piling it on themselves?).

The other is from MSNBC and is fascinating because it quotes Tom Brokaw as one of the few reasonable voices in the last weeks of Clinton's campaign. Rather than blithely assuming that it was his role as a member of the media to force Clinton out of the race, Brokaw recognized that "it was inappropriate, for journalists especially, to try to cut the process short." The fact that the hand-wringing and will-she-or-won't-she speculation was actually covered more according to the article than any stories "about how the candidates might deal with the war in Iraq, the high price of gasoline, home foreclosures or the sputtering economy."

This is, of course, patently ridiculous. Thousands of people are losing their homes to foreclosure, we're embroiled in a seemingly never-ending war that has cost thousands of lives, and gas prices are so high that they're forcing people to make some seriously tough financial choices, and all the media could talk about in April and May was how long before the little woman came to her senses and gave up the fight? Seriously?

And what good did all that speculation achieve? As seems perfectly reasonable now, Senator Clinton stayed the course through the primaries, waited a week, and threw her full support behind Senator Obama.

I don't think the focus on Senator Clinton's exit strategy was some kind of vast right-wing conspiracy against her. I do, however, think that it is symptomatic of the larger problem with elections in this country - that there is a constant pull, whether from the media, the electoral college, the superdelegates, or the party elite - to take them out of the hands of voters. Senator Clinton's campaign - whether intentionally or otherwise - was the first losing campaign in a long time to stick it out through the primaries and give every voter, no matter how seemingly numerically pointless, a chance to place their vote for the candidate they chose and not simply the candidate who had enough money to stay in the race that long. Many of these voters didn't choose her. Some didn't even choose Obama; even up to the last days of the primary season, some voters were still checking the box next to undecided.

But the point is, they had a choice.