Dean: Shut it Down No Later than July 1st

Last week it was Bill Richardson coming close to saying Hillary Clinton should recognize what has been clear for over a month: she can't win, and Barack Obama will be our nominee.  

Last night and this morning, DNC chair Howard Dean has been making the rounds declaring that he'd like to see the contest for the Democratic nomination end by July 1st:

Last night he gave an interview to the Associated Press:

``There is no point in waiting,'' he said. The Democratic political organization ``is as good or better as the Republicans', and we haven't been able to say that for about 30 years. But that all doesn't make any difference if people are really disenchanted or demoralized by a convention that's really ugly and nasty.''

[...]

``What I don't want to do is have the Democrats make a stupid mistake in April and then be sorry they said that in October and end up with some more right-wing extremists on the Supreme Court,'' he said.

Dean's supporters say he's working behind the scenes to resolve some of the issues. He's been consulting with party stalwarts about how to wrap up the nomination quickly after the voting ends in June, including former Vice President Al Gore, former presidential candidate John Edwards, former Sen. George Mitchell, former president Jimmy Carter, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, civil rights activist Jesse Jackson and former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo.

``There'll be some nasty fights if it goes to convention, and people will walk out,'' Dean said. ``But I've also been talking to a fairly significant number of, by and large, nonaligned people about how we might resolve this.''

Dean wouldn't talk in detail about what the plan is, but it likely involves encouraging superdelegates to pick a candidate shortly after the voting ends. He said he will not encourage any delegate to vote one way or another.

He didn't give many more details this morning, but he did reinforce his commitment to ending the contest no later than July 1st:

Here's what he said on the CBS Early Show:

"Well, I think the superdelegates have already been weighing in. I think that there's 800 of them and 450 of them have already said who they're for. I'd like the other 350 to say who they're at some point between now and the first of July so we don't have to take this into the convention."

On ABC's Good Morning America:

"I think it would be nice to have this all done by July 1.  If we can do it sooner than that, that's all the better.

"There has been some personal criticism.  We don't want this to degenerate into a big fight at the convention."

And on CNN he said he thought the problems with the Michigan and Florida delegations would be worked out before the convention:

"I think the delegates are eventually going to be seated in Florida and Michigan as soon as we get an agreement between the candidates on how to do that.

The  traditional news media is finally acknowledging that Hillary Clinton can't win  We will see more folks like Patrick Leahy calling on Clinton to withdraw from the race and endorse Barack Obama.  Obama will continue to pick up big endorsements, like today's endorsement by Pennsylvania senator Bob Casey.  Let's hope that sometime soon the candidate whose campaign was based on the assumption of inevitability will see that it's inevitable that Barack Obama will be the nominee.  

[UPDATE] Apparently I wasn't sufficiently explicit about the ramifications of Dean's declaration.  He is blocking Clinton's only remaining path to the nomination, which is to wait for Obama to self-destruct.  Everyone knows there's no way that Clinton will take the lead among pledged delegates.  Clinton hopes to drag out the convention on the minuscule chance that delegates--pledged as well as unpledged--will conclude that Obama can't win the general and then flock to Clinton.  Dean just said no, you're not hanging around, we're getting behind the winner no later than July, and that he'd be fine with getting it settled in June.