Two thoughts on the current situation

I recently stumbled across a "I will not vote for Obama even if it means a McCain victory" post today, and have two statements from others more eloquent than anything I could say about the subject.

The first is from Lis Carey, from a 2003 Usenet post.

Politics is the art of the possible, not the art of rigid, inflexible adherence to one guiding principle to the exclusion of all other principles in complete disregard of what is actually possible.

The second is from Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell, who was very active in the Clinton campaign. This is my transcription of what he said on Wait Wait Don't Tell Me on March 15, when the primary could still have gone either way:

A lot of people in our party are doomsday advocates, saying "This is going to kill us, we're going to be at each other's throats." I don't think so at all. I think poor Senator McCain can't get anyone to notice him for love or money, and all the focus is on our candidates. And look, we have two terrific candidates, no ifs ands or buts about it, and I think they're both capable, they're both people I think can win the fall election. I just think Hillary Clinton has the better ideas for meeting our challenges, both here in my state and in other places. . . .

I was down in Florida giving a speech to the Broward County delegates and I asked people who was for Barak Obama, and they cheered. "Who's for Hillary Clinton?", and they cheered. And I said, "Okay, I've got a message for you: one of you two groups is gonna lose. And the group that loses, I'm giving you ten days to pout, to be angry and disappointed and then you got to get over it because the stakes for this country are too high come November."