For those who still insist that the Kerry campaign is nothing more than a Trojan horse for a Hillary Clinton rescue in July, this news shows that Kerry is consolidating his support, even with the Clintons:

Former President Bill Clinton and a cast of other Democratic heavyweights began an Internet-based drive on Tuesday to raise $10 million for Senator John Kerry in the next 10 days. ...

"We're not going to yield an inch to the Republican attack machine when it comes to defining what this campaign is all about," Mr. Clinton wrote on Tuesday in his e-mail message to supporters. "It's our chance to give John Kerry the kind of immediate, dramatic support he needs to stand toe to toe with the president."

And it's not just Bill:

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, Senator Tom Daschle of South Dakota and the strategist James Carville are joining Mr. Clinton in the drive.

So far, the e-mail campaign raised $600,000 - not bad for its first six hours.

There has been a lot of speculation about the legitimacy of Kerry's bid, not least because he's dropped more than ten points since he all but locked up the nomination on March 2nd. One of our callers on the radio mentioned it as a possibility last Saturday. Unfortunately for the Democrats, this year they front-loaded the primaries, intending on giving the eventual nominee a running start at the fall campaign. Instead, the abbreviated process rushed them into focusing on one candidate -- and they wound up with an extremist and a poor long-term campaigner as the nominee. No sooner did he mathematically clinch it than he began to shoot from the lip about foreign leaders' endorsements and calling his opponents crooks and liars, inflicting unnecessary and perhaps mortal wounds on his campaign.

However, Kerry does have the delegates now to clinch the nomination. Those delegates are required to vote for Kerry on the first ballot at the convention, and that first ballot will win him the nomination. The only way Kerry wouldn't get nominated would be if he withdrew -- or the rules were changed prior to that first ballot, which would tear the Democrats apart. Rather than riding in on a white horse to save the Democrats, machinations like that on behalf of Hillary would confirm everyone's worst fears about the imperialism of the Clintons and would not only lose them the White House, but could split the party so badly that the election night could be a disaster all the way down the ticket.

No, Kerry is their nominee, and the Clintons will support him publicly with all due effort, especially after Kerry confirmed his support of scorched-earth DNC chair Terry McAuliffe, the Clinton man at the trough. If they go down in November, it will be with all hands on board.

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