"What is Hillary Cling-on Doing?" go the anguished cries. Here are my thoughts.
It's all too easy to ascribe ridiculous and irrational motivations to those we disagree with or don't understand. We have to remember that people act in accordance with their self-interest, and basically behave rationally as they define it.
My sense is that Hillary Clinton is looking out for her political future. And, again, I know the chorus of respondents here would say "but she's destroying her political future!" No. What she's destroying is what we would have her political future be.
Hillary knows at this point that she will most likely lose. That the odds are against her, and that her current approach is something of a hail mary.
Her choice is on how to lose. And this is where some aggravating aspects of gender politics come into play...
We have to understand one thing. Hillary Clinton is quite probably the most powerful woman in political history at this point. When you consider relative size, and America being a greater superpower than Great Britain, I would at least find it difficult to oppose that argument.
A woman does not become such a powerful political figure without being an expert in gender politics.
Earlier on this site, I read a story about a Clinton defender, an east coast woman. When faced with the objection about Clinton voting for the war, her defense was, "But she had to, because she's a woman." The idea was that if Clinton had voted against the war, even though it may have been a principled vote, the narrative of her being a weak woman, especially at that time in her political career, would have been so loud that it would have undermined any chances of her making the kind of political progress that would have eventually enabled her to run for the presidency.
This argument resonated for me. How am I supposed to know what kind of additional unfair double standards are put on a woman in Clinton's position back then? We all know that politics isn't a shiny art where everyone always gets 100% of what they want, and that choosing the perfect over the possible can end up counter-productive. We have the benefit of hindsight now - how we admire the people that voted against the war, and are around now to crow about it. But the possible narratives are not the same for every politician. Are there not any politicians that had their careers ended or permanently marginalized because of their votes back then, in that climate? Could Clinton have rationally realized that her being a woman may have kept her, in that climate, from being able to accomplish her sense of the greater good had she not proved her hawkishness? The bar is higher for women to prove they can handle high-pressure situations - it's unfair, but it's still true. It is possible that the only way for her to find necessary credibility - to even get to the point where she could later regret the vote - was to vote as she did.
So, when Clinton considers how to lose.
How would it look to her Washington colleagues, for a woman to graciously and submissively step aside to a Senator widely considered within congressional hallways to be an empty suit? A man who came out of nowhere and stole what was supposed to be hers, supposed to be inevitable? When she has close to half the delegates so far?
I believe that a man could do it and look selfless and strong, "for the good of the country". I'm not so sure a woman could. The Washington backroom biases would be too catty. Her credibility in the circles she would have to continue to work within would be too severely damaged.
Perhaps her only route to a viable political future in the Senate is to fight far longer than any man would. A side benefit is that if Barack were to implode, she'd still be there, but the real reason is that she's in survival mode. Not for her candidacy, but for her political future within the Senate.