Someone had to say it. Reality-based indeed:

John Edwards is a loser. He has won exactly two elections in his life and lost 31. Only one of his wins and all of his losses were in presidential primaries and caucuses. He remains perfectly positioned to continue to lose with a Kucinich-like consistency. Nothing but egomania keeps Edwards in the race now. All presidential candidates are egomaniacs but some of them have party status worth preserving that forces them to drop out when they hit the wall. A loser like Edwards has no status or dignity to lose. Campaigning and losing is his life. So, he will continue his simple-minded, losing campaign and deny Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton the one-on-one contest they deserve.

If John Edwards stays in the race, he might, in the end, become nothing other than the Southern white man who stood in the way of the black man. And for that, he would deserve a lifetime of liberal condemnation.

It’s an identity politics round-robin! Obama’s supporters are attacking Hillary for being racially insensitive, Hillary’s supporters are attacking Obama for being condescending towards women, Edwards’s supporters are attacking Edwards for being chauvinistic, and now inevitably comes the attack on Edwards for being de facto racist in his campaign ambitions. Is it time for Silky to deploy Elizabeth for another round of why Hillary’s (comparatively) bad for women? Or a reprise from Michelle Obama of why you have to be able to “run your own house” if you want to run the White House? There’s no telling to what depths the “tolerance” will sink as the polls tighten, although we’ve already had a preview from Scary Larry himself of how it’ll go in the general if Mitt somehow pulls it out. Your exit quotation of the day: “If you’re a woman, you vote for Hillary because of what it means to women everywhere.”

Update: Actually, this should have been exit quotation of the day.

Addressing Oprah directly, Roseanne adds, “You are a closeted republican and chose Barak [sic] Obama because you do not like other women who actually stand for something to working American Women besides glamour, angels, Hollywood and dieting!”

Wednesday night, Roseanne seemed to throw her support behind Hillary Clinton, stating, “I have decided that having a woman president before any man of any color is what these times call for.” But by Thursday morning she assured she “liked Obama, too.”

Update: Politico stirs the pot, with an assist from Drudge bearing a “race war” headline. So much for post-racial politics:

A series of comments from Senator Hillary Clinton, her husband, and her supporters are spurring a racial backlash and adding a divisive edge to the presidential primary as the candidates head south to heavily African-American South Carolina…

Many analysts think Clinton won New Hampshire on the back of a feminist backlash against criticism from her rivals and the media, and now, after his own defeat, it’s Obama’s turn. Race is particularly complicated turf this year, however, in a contest that features two towering figures who pride themselves for breaking racial barriers in American politics…

Thursday, a key player in black South Carolina politics, Rep. James Clyburn, told the New York Times he’d consider endorsing Obama in response to what he considered a lack of respect in the Clinton campaign’s approach to Obama…

“Some of the Obama people are clearly trying to use Hillary’s comments about Martin Luther King and distort them into something she did not say, which is outrageous,” said former Pennsylvania Rep. William Gray. “It’s a hot issue in South Carolina, and they’re spreading the word all over. I hope that the good senator will make sure that none of his people are doing that. We don’t need to have a debate about race or gender.”

Billy Jeff’s taking a beating for calling coverage of Obama’s campaign a “fairy tale,” i.e. that a black man could never be elected president. His comments at the time had nothing to do with race, though: They were about Obama’s shifting positions on Iraq and the alleged negativity of the Clinton campaign vis-a-vis Obama’s. See for yourself.