Hillary "Death Watch?" Not Funny.

Let me open with the disclaimer that accompanies so many diaries and comments on dKos these days: I am an Obama supporter. But I'm deeply disturbed by this new feature on Slate.com: the Hillary Deathwatch.

The article is accompanied by a cartoon of Hillary trying to avoid going down with a sinking ship. But the attempt at humor doesn't really soften the opening paragraph, written with no sense of humor/irony at all:

Hillary Clinton is as good as dead. This became the consensus over the past week, when the media awoke en masse to the dual reality that 1) Clinton can't close the pledged-delegate gap and 2) Obama has her beat in the popular vote.... So the question now is not just "How dead is she?" but "When will she realize it?"

Of course this is not literally a death or suicide watch for Senator Clinton. And maybe I have no sense of humor. But at a time when grim milestones are being marked in Iraq and the world, in general, is pretty f*cked up, should we really be comparing the end of an unsuccessful presidential campaign to death? Maybe I could forgive the name of the feature if it were funny or incisive.

This defeat is not even the end of Clinton's political career: she'll be a Senator for at least four more years, if she chooses not to resign in the event of Obama's ascent to the presidency.

War aside and human misery aside, is this really the best analysis that the Washington Post (which owns Slate) can offer? Is this new feature a continuation of the lazy horse race metaphor? The winner gets the purse and the loser gets... shot? Put down?

I believe another equine term aptly sums up the "Hillary Deathwatch:" lame.

UPDATE: Great idea from FishOutOfWater. What's a better (read: funnier) name for the "Hillary Deathwatch?" Consult your funny bone and fire away in the comments, if you're so inclined.