Posted by Jed Lewison on Fri Mar 28, 2008 at 5:36 AM Pacific

Things are brewing

Chris Dodd takes it a step beyond Bill Richardson. We're still going to have Pennsylvania and North Carolina and Indiana, as we probably should. But once those contests are over, unless Hillary Clinton has won at least 60% of the pledged delegates it will be over. The superdelegates will end it. And even if she does get 60%, it doesn't mean she's won -- it just means she'll probably continue the campaign, albeit still as a huge underdog to overtake Obama's lead.

Update: Howard Dean chimes in, setting July 1 as a drop-dead date.

 Q: As I mentioned earlier, you were the general chairman of the Democratic National Committee. Now, you know that a lot of Democrats feel that this increasingly bitter race between Obama and Clinton is hurting the party. First of all, do you think that is true? And secondly, if you were in charge, what would you do?

Dodd: Well, I think it is hurting. Look, we've got five more months to go before the Democratic convention at the end of August and, candidly, we cannot go five more months with the kind of daily sniping that's going on and have a candidate emerge in that convention. My hope is that it will be Barack Obama, but if it's Hillary Clinton, she too will suffer, in my view, from this kind of a campaign that I think is undermining the credibility and the quality of the two candidates that we have. We have two very strong candidates. So I'm worried about this going on endlessly and to a large extent, Linda, the media, a lot of these cable networks, are enjoying this. It's what is keeping them alive financially. The fact that this thing is going on forever, back and forth every day, all night -- I don't think it's really helping the candidates or the political institutions.

Q: What's the solution?

Dodd: Well, the solution is -- look, we've got a contest coming up in Pennsylvania and one in North Carolina and Indiana very quickly afterwards. In my view, the outcome of those three races will determine -- I think the race has been determined, anyway, at this point. I think it's very difficult to imagine how anyone can believe that Barack Obama can't be the nominee of the party. I think that's a foregone conclusion, in my view, at this juncture given where things are.

But certainly over the next couple of weeks, as we get into April, it seems to me then, that the national leadership of this party has to stand up and reach a conclusion. And in the absence of doing that -- and that's not easy, and I realize it's painful. But the alternatives, allowing this sort of to fester over the months of June, and July and August, I think, are irresponsible. I think you have to make a decision, and hopefully the candidates will respect it and people will rally behind a nominee that, I think, emerges from these contests over the next month. That's my suggestion. That's what I would do.