It's Hillary's Job to Unite the Party

I've been reading around the blogosphere this morning and have noticed a sentiment expressed that it's up to Hillary Clinton to unite the party. Some have disagreed. When it comes down to it though, it's been Hillary and her cohorts rhetoric that has whipped her supporters into a frenzy.

I think this quote from Eve Fairbanks pretty well sums it up:

Has it come to this? We tend to assume the Hillary camp's hot rhetoric--that Obama's less ready than McCain to be commander-in-chief, that the DNC in Florida is like Mugabe in Zimbabwe--is studied, purposeful, that they can't really believe it. That may be true at the Lanny Davis level, but by the time it trickles down to Hillary's most grassroots supporters, it becomes deadly serious.

And that's where we're at right now. Hillary's supporters have come to believe so fervently in this rhetoric that many have buried their heads in the sands when it comes to who they're going to support in November. You can't convince me that Harold Ickes going off about "hijacking" the process wasn't a coordinated effort from Hillary either.

This type of language MUST stop. And that directive can't come from Barack Obama. That has to come from Hillary herself. The onus is on her and her alone to step up to the podium and say: "Barack Obama has won this campaign legitimately and fairly. He earned more pledged delegates and superdelegates, which both campaigns stated was the true metric for victory from the outset of the contest. While we might disagree over the ruling about Michigan, we respect the DNC RBC and their decision, and we now look forward to taking the fight to John McCain this fall as a united party."

Only Hillary Clinton can do this. And for the sake of the party in November, I believe that she MUST do this. Too much is at stake for her not to.