The Boston Phoenix‘s Steven Stark asks why so many Democrats are calling for Hillary Clinton to end her presidential campaign despite her being so close to Barack Obama in terms of delegates and the popular vote:

…Clinton is being held to a different standard than virtually any other candidate in history. That’s being driven by Clinton fatigue, but it’s also being driven by a concerted campaign that examines every action the Clintons take and somehow finds the basest, most self-serving motivation for its existence. Thus, in this case, when Clinton is simply doing what everyone else has always done, she’s constantly attacked as an obsessed and crazed egomaniac, bent on self-aggrandizement at the expense of her party. Is there a fair amount of sexism in the way she’s being asked to get out of the way so a man can have the job? You be the judge.

I agree that it’s understandable for Clinton to remain in the race, though I’m not sure she’s the victim of sexism here. Stark writes that second-place candidates have historically remained active through the end of the primaries and even into the national conventions, but the Democrats may have become accustomed to quick wrap-ups after the short campaigns of 2000 and 2004, when Al Gore and John Kerry became certain nominees only a few days or weeks after winning the New Hampshire primary.

Stark also notes that “In 1988, Jesse Jackson took his hopeless campaign against winner Michael Dukakis all the way to the convention, often to great media praise.” But in that case, Dukakis and party leaders were happy to have Jackson travel around the country criticizing Dukakis for not being liberal enough and not paying enough attention to minority and low-income Americans, since they thought it helped Dukakis among the independents and moderates he’d need in the general election. This time, Hillary Clinton is criticizing Barack Obama in ways that could hurt him (he’s not ready to be commander-in-chief, his church pastor doesn’t fit the sensibilities of, say, Westchester County) if he’s the nominee in November. The last primary race I can think of with anything close to this dynamic is 1984, when Gary Hart warned that the narrowly leading Walter Mondale would be a weak general-election candidate, but even then Hart didn’t argue that Mondale was unqualified to be president. And it was Hart, not Mondale, who ran better among independents in the primaries and seemed able to attract new voters to the polls, so in some ways he resembles Obama more than Clinton.

Still, Stark was one of the few political analysts who predicted an Obama nomination last year, when he ran far behind Clinton in the polls, so he can’t be dismissed as a Hillary apologist.