Should Obama Go 3rd Party if Hillary Keeps This Up?

I have to tell you, I am angry as hell at Hillary Clinton right now.

She is not running a tough primary campaign anymore. She is running a knock down, drag out, dirty as hell general election campaign against Barack Obama. And Obama, for strategic reasons, and because he's worried about winning the general election, is pulling his punches against Hillary.

For the most part, the official and unofficial Obama aparatus is hitting Hillary (admittedly hard) on policy differences and on the tone of her campaign. But he is not going into the dirty, personal stuff. [See this great post by John Aravosis illustrating how much more Obama could be saying and doing to go after Hillary and Bill Clinton]

The reason is not that Obama is a nice guy, morally superior, or some kind of wimpy campaigner. He's plenty tough and hard nosed enough. No, the reason Obama is pulling punches is that he knows he needs a unified Democratic party to run against McCain in the general election and win.

And, despite his best efforts, the longer this campaign goes on the more alienated Hillary's supporters become. But, believe me, it could be a hell of a lot worse if Obama decided to adopt the Hillary kitchen sink approach.

What I am most concerned about is that if Hillary manages to win 3 out of the 4 states today (Texas, Ohio and Rhode Island), she will stay in this race until at least Pennsylvania. [April 22nd]

If that happens, Obama will know that in order to win, he must knock her out in that state. He would then have to decide whether to start throwing the kitchen sink at her -- thus tearing asunder the Democratic party in the fall. It would, in many ways, be similar to the 1980 campaign in which Ted Kennedy challenged the sitting Democratic President for the nomination.

And while this sad, sordid soap opera goes on for another 6 weeks John McCain will take a vacation in Arizona, get rested, tanned, and husband his resoirces. He will raise a lot of money, and will not have to spend much of it because he knows that Hillary and Obama will be beating each other to a pulp for him.

So...what should Obama do? I think he should start playing hardball with the superdelegates, and threaten to run as a third party candidate (Obama/Hagel?) if they do not take Hillary out and clear the field for him.

That would be the Democratic party's apocalypse. Obama would take African Americans and new voters from the party. Obama has the money, oraganization and ability to run a successful third party/independent campaign. And, he could run as the progressive, common sense alteranative to the Capitulationcrats.

And, if he did run as a 3rd party candidate, Hillary would stand a very good chance of actually coming in third.

Hillary may be counting on the assumption that she can always put Obama on the ticket with her to heal any divisions she creates in the party. Obama does not have that luxury. Obama would help Hillary in the general. She would not help Obama.

Hillary may also be looking at the 2000 GOP primary as precedent for what she is doing. George W. Bush pummeled the hell out of John McCain in the dirtiest campaign imagineable, and still managed to "win" the election because McCain was a loyal party man in the end. But that race ended relatively early.

This is why Obama threatening to run as a third party candidate would force the Superdelegates to either end this thing, or see the Democratic party go down to an historic defeat that it may never recover from.

The question is, would Obama have trhe balls to do this? I am not sure he would. I think Hillary's assessment of him is correct. That Obama would loyally back her campaign, or accept the number two spot and thus heal the party. As much as his supporters think of him as a movement candidate, he is reallly a party loyalist. He is also exceedingly cautious, and may feel that he would be the presumptive Democraric nominee in 2012 if Hillary goes down to defeat -- but only if Obama does everything he can to help her campaign this year.

So, what do you all think?

ADDENDUM: Jusat out of curiosity, why is it that Barack Obama is expected to sarcrifice his ambitions for party unity, but Hillary isn't? Why is Hillary permitted to play hardball, but Obama is not? Why does she get a free pass, but any suggestion that Obama threaten to go third party is considered out of bounds?

Why the double standard? Hillary supportesr seem to be saying "If he can;t handle the tough stuff, maybe he shouldn't be the nominee." But when it is suggested he play just as rough, it's all of a sudden "disloyal," or "hurting our party." Sorry, I don't buy it. Obama has to use every tool at his disposal. And threatening a third party run to knock Hillary out of the box, is one of those tools. Superdelegates would not flock to Hillary if he made that threat. They would take Hillary out.