The obituary for the political career of Bill and Hillary Clinton has been written so many times that we’ve learned not to rush into it. Let us just say that while he has spoken out of turn from time to time, she has run a campaign that is a credit to her political reputation and to the state she represents in the Senate. On a number of issues, Mrs. Clinton has made arguments against Senator Obama that are likely to be taken up successfully by the Republicans in the fall campaign, beginning with her rebuff to his eagerness to sit down with President Ahmadinejad, a point marked by Senator McCain yesterday. She also opposed Mr. Obama’s vow to raise payroll taxes. She has pressed the issue of Mr. Obama’s association with a former Weatherman radical, William Ayers.

As the campaign has come into focus, Mrs. Clinton has made a respectable showing at the ballot box, ultimately winning what, by some counts, is a majority of the popular vote and prevailing in such battleground states as Texas, Pennsylvania, California, and Ohio. Even Mr. Obama, it seems, is going to need superdelegates to put himself over the top, making talk from his camp about how superdelegates handing her a victory would thwart the will of the people wear a bit thin.

This newspaper isn’t endorsing either candidate, and we can see the attractiveness both of Mr. Obama’s rhetoric on bipartisan unity and of turning the page on the Clinton era, generationally and in terms of their control of the Democratic Party. The Democrats have the right to choose their own nominee in whatever manner they choose. If we were a Democratic superdelegate, however, we’d feel quite comfortable this morning throwing in our lot with Mrs. Clinton. If not enough make that decision to win her the nomination, she can nonetheless return to the Senate with her head held high.