Is it time for Senator Clinton, for the sake of unity, to concede?

[anigbrowl]

150. Me too, but...

it takes a lot of money to run a political campaign, and my impression was that O'Malley ran out of the stuff early on. I'd rather we had publicly funded elections, but realistically you'd have some sort of filter to exclude joke and crazypants candidates*. More to the point, the fact that you need a pretty solid financial plan to be competitive is a given right now, so you have to build your campaign strategy around the way things are rather than the way you'd prefer them to be. O'Malley knew that this would require decent amounts of cash before he announced so if he went broke after IA that's his own fault. He could have raised more or made a decision to spend less in IA and campaign more aggressively in NH or whatever. Personally I don't think he was ever a serious contender and just threw his hat into the ring in hopes of either getting a job or getting his name out there for a more serious run in 2020.

* that might seem pretty harsh, but after sitting through many hours of watching the no-hoper candidates on C-Span it's hard to avoid the conclusion that a lot of them are cuckoo. If you missed it this time tune in next cycle before the New Hampshire primary; it only costs $1000 to get on the ballot in NH and there's no minimum signature requirement so there's always a bunch of fringe candidates on the NH ballot.