It is a long stretch til the Pennsylvania primary on April 22nd but I feel that somehow this Democratic presidential process should be wrapped up before then. Things are getting too ugly right now between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and the collateral damage to the party’s chances in November may be too hard to overcome to secure the White House.

Thing is though as that piece by John Vandrei and Mike Allen at Politico.com amply demonstrates, there is no real way for Clinton to win the nomination through the normal process i.e. through delegates. Obama’s overall lead in delegates may not be overly great but it is substantial enough that winning just a few of the primaries still on the calendar like North Carolina and Oregon will be enough to deny her the delegates she needs to overcome the deficit. Yet she soldiers on and through her surrogates keeps tossing grenades at Obama to the effect that one wonders if she is thinking that if she can not get the nomination, then she will make sure that Obama will never occupy the White House.

The personal attacks along with the Reverend Wright controversy has brought up Obama’s negative ratings though it seems from the NBC/Wall Street Journal poll released yesterday, the after effects of Obama’s rough week has been limited to some degree. But just as the controversy starts dying down, Clinton brings it up again to draw away attention from the issue of her creditability when she highly exaggerated the circumstances of her trip to Bosnia in 1996.

Then there is all of the other noise going on around the campaign like prominent Clinton supporters sending off a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi generally to the effect that if she did not play ball with them, then they will pull their support from the party in the fall. Needless to say, when this letter became known, it did not cast the Clinton campaign in a good light.

… and the Pennslyvania primary is still several weeks away.

Not sure how much more the Democratic party can take of this. The media is somewhat complicit in this as it needs to talk about something during this quiet period. Consequently, every mis-statement, gaffe, or controversy will be played up as a significant turning point in somebody’s campaign.Yet as seen in polls released this week, the Wright controversy has only mildly damaged Obama among Democrats. How the fall campaign from Republicans handle this remains to be seen.

Wish she would just go away by graciously conceding and leave the nomination in Obama’s hands giving him opportunity to build his case for the whole nation on why he is a better candidate than John McCain. But it looks like she will not and will fight to the bitter end, Democratic party be damned.