And so it continues… Clinton’s victory in PA means that we will almost certainly see the Democratic nomination occur at the convention after a floor fight of some sort.  It also means four more months of relentlessly negative campaigning — gleefully on Hillary’s part, reluctantly on Obama’s.  It also means that regardless of Obama’s desires, the process of transforming American politics won’t begin this year.

This is a sad outcome.  At the beginning of the process, Democrats were enthusiastic about having three attractive, credible candidates in Clinton, Edwards, and Obama.  This was an opportunity to show the country what a serious campaign could be about.  Had the Democrats managed to remain at a high level, it would have been a powerful contrast to the GOP primaries, and would have clearly shown that the Democratic party is the party of serious-minded, responsible adults.  Instead, Hillary, seeing the nomination slipping away, went negative — character assassination, innuendo, fear mongering… the whole nine yards.  The Democrats had a chance to show that there is a major difference between the parties, but Clinton threw away the Dem’s biggest potential advantage for the fall by running a gutter-politics campaign.  Smart in the short-run, but disastrous in the long-term.