We pay a service to offer us a slate of editorial cartoons each day. Most of them look like the one published under this editorial, urging Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York to give up her bid for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Just type "The Clintons know it's over" into Google (with quotation marks), and you'll get a firestorm of punditry that seems determined to get Hillary Clinton out of this race, and now.

It's not that there's no justification. According to the Associated Press count, Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois has 1,871.5 delegates. Clinton has 1,697. One candidate needs 2,025 to get the nomination. He keeps getting more; Hillary's supporters seem to be abandoning her.

Massachusetts Sen. Edward Kennedy not only throwing his superdelegate votes to Obama, he's trash-talking Hillary as a bad choice for vice president. Never mind that Massachusetts voters gave her their support by 15 percentage points.

The drumbeat asking Hillary to step down and shut up grew louder after last week's primaries in North Carolina and Indiana. Never mind that she won in Indiana. Her overall numbers look bad.

The tone reflected in today's cartoon was often echoed by political writers such as Eleanor Clift of Newsweek, who wrote in the magazine's May 9 edition: "The Clintons know it's over. The bad news was written all over the Big Dog's face as he stood behind his wife, slack-jawed and weary, as she vowed to continue her fight for the White House. Her narrow win in Indiana coupled with a crushing defeat in North Carolina has made Barack Obama the presumptive nominee."

Who knew that Clift is a mind reader? Could be that the big dog is 61 in human years, with a bum ticker and a 24/7 travel schedule?

Those who saw him Monday night, addressing an overflow crowd at Lincoln School, did not see a defeated man.

After appearances today in Roseburg, Grants Pass, and Klamath Falls, he plans to head for Montana tonight, where he has scheduled appearances on Wednesday in Kalispell and Missoula.

So what would be the big harm to the Democrats if we all just let the voters of Oregon decide whether Hillary's campaign needs to stop here … or whether it stops after the June 1 Democratic primary in Puerto Rico or the June 3 showdowns in South Dakota and Montana?

In this regard, we can take some cues from Obama, who has tempered his criticism and demonstrates some shrewd looking-ahead acumen and realized that it would be better if, instead of telling Hillary to shut up and get off the bus, he let her decide when and if to concede.

Hillary Clinton is the first woman to make a serious run at the presidency, and almost 17 million people have so far indicated they would like to see her as president. Obama is smart not to alienate them.

When and if she stops her campaign should be up to her. The rest of us should simply do our talking by marking and sending in - or dropping off - our ballots.