If Sen Clinton wants to do some spectacularly unexpected work for her country, her concession speech would read somewhat as follows:

My Fellow Americans, today I bring to an honorable conclusion the campaign for the Presidency that I began with such a serene sense of entitlement so long ago. In delegates, popular vote, number of individual contributors and number of states won, Sen Obama's lead is indisputable. I am happy to see him as our nominee and will vigorously support him as he goes forth to defeat the Third Bush Term under the dubious and superannuated patronage of Sen John McCain.

When I began, I could not have known that the best campaign of the 20th century would not prove adequate to the 21st; that the consultant-driven swing-state-only calculus of the last two Democratic presidential defeats would be overthrown; or that the American people's disgust at a dishonest, tragic, savage, pointless and mismanaged war would require a stronger peace policy than I was initially prepared to follow.

In a certain twisted way, it makes sense that Sen Hillary Clinton is taking an excruciatingly long time to acknowledge what polls and voters have ratified since February: she cannot win the Democratic nomination in 2008 and therefore will never be president.

As befits a sideways kind of New Yorker, if she does not make it here, she cannot make it anywhere. Obama is not going to fail renomination as incumbent president in 2012, and she will be too old in 2016 as well as having an incumbent vice-president to contend with. This horrid and implacable truth must haunt her.

Hers is a common problem in other lines of very public work. What we have here is the reluctant, resisted farewell tour of that once-hot rock band, The Clintons; and after this, they have to hang it up because -- despite all their practice -- their pipes are shot, they just can’t hit the notes anymore, and the public taste has moved beyond their smooth but superannuated act.

More Yet Below

After watching Mark Halperin's latest, and reading Poblano's excellent diary, I did a little research and found that Halperin filed the following report in the weeks prior to the US Winter Olympic Trials in 1994 - I guess he used to be a sports reporter:

Everybody loves refrigerator lists, right?

Magnets that list Five Reasons I Love Lists, and Bush-isms To Live By...we love ‘em. Magnetic notepads to make our own To-Do and Grocery lists...we can’t function without ‘em.  

Even the books we buy, such as Ten-Thousand Places You’ll Never See Before You Die, and One Hundred Things I Learned In Kindergarten And Forgot By First Grade Let Alone Adulthood, we’d post on the side of the refrigerator if we could find magnets big enough.

Maureen Dowd has hit all of the bulleted points on the Clintons' strategy. I think Bill has messed up his whole schtick on this one because everyone has caught on. Here we go....

On the very day that Jake Tapper quoted a DNC official as saying that Hillary Clinton has resorted to the "Tonya Harding Option" comes news that fun times are taking place over at the Harding home.

Not always a big fan of Jake Tapper, but he scores an interview with an unnamed DNC member who brands the Clinton campaign strategy as well as any I've seen

The delegate math is difficult for Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-NY, the official said. But it's not a question of CAN she achieve it. Of course she can, the official said.

The question is -- what will Clinton have to do in order to achieve it?

What will she have to do to Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, in order to eke out her improbable victory?

She will have to "break his back," the official said. She will have to destroy Obama, make Obama completely unacceptable.

"Her securing the nomination is certainly possible - but it will require exercising the 'Tonya Harding option.'" the official said. "Is that really what we Democrats want?"
The Tonya Harding Option -- the first time I've heard it put that way.

It implies that Clinton is so set on ensuring that Obama doesn't get the nomination, not only is she willing to take extra-ruthless steps, but in the end neither she nor Obama win the gold.

The Tonya Harding Option indeed...we all should start using that phrase now.