It's time for Hillary Clinton to give up her futile quest for the U.S. presidency. She needs to get out soon, putting a united Democratic party ahead of personal ambition before her reputation in a sometimes-ugly campaign is further sullied.

After Barack Obama's blowout victory in Wisconsin last week, the Clinton camp vowed to "go negative" on an opponent who has won more than twice as many primary-season contests as Clinton; leads her in popular vote and pledged delegates; is making gains in Clinton's base of women, blue-collar workers and Hispanics; and is shown in most polls beating John McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, in the general election in November, with Clinton trailing the Arizona senator.

Democrats have never nominated a candidate who lost 11 consecutive contests, as Clinton has since Feb. 5. Turning back the Obama tide is a mathematical improbability, given the Democratic practice of apportioning delegates by popular vote. To even narrow Obama's lead in pledged delegates, Clinton has to win the next two delegate-rich states of Texas and Ohio on March 4 by wide margins.

That's unlikely to happen. Clinton's leads in those two must-win states, in double digits as recently as a week ago, have since shrivelled; in Texas, the New York senator is now tied with Obama. The last delegate-rich state, Pennsylvania, doesn't vote until April 24.

That gives McCain a two-month head start in developing a plan of attack that has already begun and is focused, tellingly, on Obama.

The media already have written Clinton off, with daily questions about why she is determined to stay in a race she can't win.

Typical of losing campaigns, Clinton campaign coverage is now dominated by obituaries dwelling on the candidate's misjudgements, overpaid and inept advisers, and misspent funds ($1,200 on Dunkin' Donuts runs in January).

Clinton will need so-called "superdelegates," party brass who account for about 20 per cent of total delegates, to put her over the top. She's also fighting to restore the voting rights of delegates in key states Florida and Michigan, which defied a Democratic National Committee edict not to hold their contests early. Clinton won both uncontested primaries.

The protracted backroom deal-making by which Clinton would be required to secure the nomination – culminating in a floor fight over the disputed Florida and Michigan delegations at the Democratic National Convention in Denver in August – would yield an outcome widely regarded as illegitimate, a trampling of party regulars by the party establishment and the Clinton machine.

A battle to the finish with Clinton emerging victorious would divide Democrats in a year in which their prospects of winning the White House have seldom been brighter.

The unprecedented number of alienated youths that Obama has brought into politics, along with countless other Democrats and independents, would likely withhold their donations, volunteer efforts and even their votes in the November election.

With her acute mastery of policy and 35 years of political experience, Clinton is one of the strongest candidates to seek the presidency.

Her campaign didn't anticipate, and has not been able to overpower, an Obama candidacy that has become a movement, one that is less about traditional malcontents – the politics of boomer pols like Clinton – than a new unity in tackling challenges like climate change and nuclear proliferation that obviously require communal action.

This year also marks the beginning of the end of "identity politics," narrow appeals to African Americans, "soccer moms" and white Southern males, an overdue transformation led by a Kenyan-Kansan educated in Jakarta, multiracial Hawaii, New York and Boston, whose formative career years were spent as a community organizer working with poor blacks and Hispanics in Chicago – America's first "Benetton" candidate, as The New Republic's Leon Wieseltier has labelled Obama.

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There has been talk among Clinton's peers in the Senate about her attractiveness as a future majority leader. She also has been mooted as an ideal Supreme Court nominee, a guardian of causes that liberals hold dear.

But nothing like that is in prospect if Clinton holds to her current course, jeopardizing her party in a contest for the White House that is the Democrats to lose. A graceful exit now would not be the first time a Clinton has had to lower his or her expectations, and emerge the better for it.

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