An Open Letter To Senator Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party leadership:

It is time for you, Senator Clinton, to act graciously and like a statesperson, and withdraw from the race.

As a Democratic Party, as a nation and as a world, we are facing immense, complex, global challenges, and correspondingly great opportunities. Senator Obama is calling us to deep commitment and service, on behalf of the common good. He possesses strong leadership capacities, including a very impressive ability to inspire and mobilize citizens to get involved and solve problems together. The Party has a once-every-three-generations possibility to seize this moment and support Senator Obama's large and magnetic vision, to bring our country together to fulfill its true purpose in the world, i.e., to manifest the values of freedom, democracy, pluralism and unity-through-diversity and to bring innovative solutions to the immense global problems we are facing: genocide; war; interethnic and intercultural fear and hatred; extreme poverty, malnutrition and starvation; severe and possibly catastrophic economic problems; global warming; and terrorism.

People in many nations are interested in and very supportive of Senator Obama. He has the personal qualities and rich, diverse life experience to speak to many segments not only of our society, but also of the world. He has the capacity to lead not only our country, but to help the U.S. exemplify constructive leadership in the world -- leadership that demonstrates an understanding of other cultures and the life realities of other people, and that can therefore unify many countries in a joint effort to solve the global problems that can only be solved through cooperation among nations.

Senator Clinton, you, on the other hand, have been relentlessly engaging in the politics of negativity, fear and division. You allow yourself to be a tool of these forces of resistance, manipulating the unconscious fears of people in a vain attempt to get elected. In the process, you are destroying yourself (your negatives have continued to rise and now stand at 54%), harming Senator Obama by stoking racist and classist fears and stereotypes, and splitting the Democratic Party (possibly leading to the loss of the Fall election and the long-term abandonment of the Party by African Americans, youth, progressives, independents, and voters like us).

Perhaps the most reprehensible actions by you and your surrogates, including your husband, revolve around issues of race and class. Provoking the fears and resentments of lower- and middle-class whites, including the elderly (rather than engaging in an honest explorations of solutions to these issues) is callous and harmful to our country over the long run. While Senator Obama's candidacy provides our Party and our country a great opportunity to advance interracial and interclass relations and understanding immeasurably (evidenced by his speech on race), you continue to undercut this understanding by spewing superficial sound bytes that are designed only to increase voter fear and misunderstanding.

Since you started to lose to Senator Obama, you and your surrogates have relentlessly stirred racial and class fears, especially leading up to the Pennsylvania primary, including Bill Clinton's comments on the race card on the day before the primary, Bob Johnson's defense of Geraldine Ferraro's racism on the second and third days before the primary, the Osama bin Laden ad (subtly tying Obama's race into fears of terrorism) the day before the election, Geraldine Ferraro's numerous racist comments, your obsessive focus upon his "bitter" comments (which many African Americans considered to be a form of "Who's this uppity black?"), etc. In this country, race, class and economics are deeply intertwined, and it takes only a subtle reference or image to stir these deep currents. Opening these wounds to win an election is unconscionable and irresponsible. Whereas Obama is inviting us to a deeper exploration and healing, you and your surrogates keep merely pulling the scabs off the wounds, over and over and over, leaving them raw and painful, with more, not less, misunderstanding, resentment, discouragement and fear.

What is the evidence of this effect? Since you began these tactics, African Americans have moved even more in the direction of Senator Obama, almost to the point of total support. Even more concerning, 13% of Pennsylvania voters answering exit-poll questions admitted that race mattered in their voting. Three-fourths voted for you. That's an unusually high admission-rate in exit polls regarding the influence of race, since individuals tend to deny racism in person-to-person interviews. The actual percentage of race-driven voting is probably much higher. That race-driven voting is due to your campaign tactics. In the early primaries, Senator Obama was attracting votes from many whites and fewer blacks. Those proportions have been mostly reversed, as you have continuously stoked white fear and resentment. Ironically, you have stoked the bitterness of rural whites, while wrongly and inauthentically criticizing Senator Obama for doing the same.Bob Herbert, a columnist at The New York Times, believes that Obama needs a united Democratic Party to win in November, because he is black and will face prejudice and bias. If true, your constant playing of the race and class cards is dividing the Party and doing the Republicans' work. If you step back and act from the big picture -- i.e., what is the common good for the party, the country and the world -- you will start supporting Obama and helping to unite the Party behind him. The only possible way you can gain the nomination -- and that is an overwhelmingly improbable longshot -- is by running so negatively that you might draw most of the uncommitted superdelegates to you. But you will divide and destroy the Party in the process. If the superdelegates were to give the nomination to you, and ignore the democratic will of the people, African American, youth, and other vital and enthusiastic pillars of the Democratic party will desert it in droves. Such a destructive approach would be a wasteful shame. Despite your victories in Ohio and Pennsylvania, Obama still leads in every vote category, other than long-ago-committed-to-you superdelegates, and the overall trend continues in his favor. You have every right to continue your campaign. But this election is not a question about your rights. Rather, it's a question of what is right action on your part, to do what is right for the country. Insisting that every voter in the remaining primary states vote, when you have no chance of winning the popular vote or the most pledged delegates, is a specious argument that distracts attention from your responsibility to do the right thing.Because you cannot distinguish yourself from Obama on the issues, and because he is an extremely attractive and inspiring candidate, your only course of action will remain to attempt to destroy him personally. I hope that in your heart and soul you are above that and ask you to reject such a destructive and emotionally violent course.If you withdraw, the Democratic Party, as Bob Herbert correctly pointed out, will be able to focus again on the issues, since there are clear, marked and crucial differences between the Democrats and Republicans. Nothing could be more important. If you withdraw, The Democrats have an excellent chance of winning. If not, there is a good chance that we will lose.This will be especially likely if you continue to ally yourself with John McCain, while attacking Senator Obama. I couldn't believe that you said that you and McCain were qualified to be commander-in-chief, unlike Obama. First of all, that's not true, as you have otherwise admitted. Second, why in God's name would you join yourself with your Republican opponent, while tearing down a fellow Democrat by expressing an untruth?Following the Pennsylvania primary, The New York Times, which endorsed you, had this to say:

Voters are getting tired of [her negative campaigning]; it is demeaning the political process; and it does not work. It is past time for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton to acknowledge that the negativity, for which she is mostly responsible, does nothing but harm to her, her opponent, her party and the 2008 election....It is getting to be time for the superdelegates to do what the Democrats had in mind when they created superdelegates: settle a bloody race that cannot be won at the ballot box. Mrs. Clinton once had a big lead among the party elders, but has been steadily losing it, in large part because of her negative campaign. If she is ever to have a hope of persuading these most loyal of Democrats to come back to her side, let alone win over the larger body of voters, she has to call off the dogs.

The well respected historian, Doris Kearns Goodwin, said this recently regarding Obama's leadership capabilities:

In his speech on race, Senator Obama reached down, in a very unusual way for a politician, to understand the racism situation in this country. He showed a mind at work, that is quite extraordinary....We say we're worried about what's going to happen after McCain or the Republicans start to go after him; but Obama showed that, in a crisis, he could respond very, very well.

In other words, stop patronizing us, Senator Clinton, by telling us your doing us a favor by doing the Republicans' work. We don't need you to do that, and it's presumptuous and insincere of you to pretend that's your role. You appear to be staying in the race in the slim hope that Senator Obama will self-destruct. Is that any grounds to justify a campaign of divisiveness, fear and destruction? No. If Senator Obama were to self-destruct, staying in the race guarantees you nothing. In fact, you are continuing to alienate voters and superdelegates. On the other hand, if you withdraw and Senator Obama then self-destructs, the Party would obviously turn to you. Obama represents the American Dream, having risen from adverse circumstances and poverty to serve his community, his country and, as the first African American president, the world. His election would attest to the fact that our country still is an example of equal opportunity, openness and e pluribus unum. I hope the Democrats do not lose this incredible opportunity to represent the future, to lead the world, and to inspire billions of people to work together for the common good.My wife and I have been Democrats for 40 years and have voted in every primary and general election. And, by the way, we are white.