The Clinton Backlash
Wyoming didn't really change much, but then it appears that neither did Ohio and Texas. Prior to Hillary winning those contests, there was increasing pressure on her to bow out of the contest and let Obama be the candidate. And now, just about everywhere I look, the pressure telling Hillary to go away already is even more vocal than it was before. And the fault can be laid entirely at her own feet.
Gary Hart lambasted her for breaking the sacred rule of not giving ammunition to the other party's candidate. John Cole calls her McCain's new girlfriend. Seth Grahame-Smith is fed up and done defending and apologizing for her. Matt Yglesias talks about The Cost of Egotism:
Were Hillary Clinton not determined to drag out the Democratic primary despite considerable evidence that she stands no realistic chance of closing Barack Obama's delegate lead, John McCain would, right now, be groaning under the yoke of a massive advertising campaign designed to define him and Obama in the public eye for the first time. Instead, McCain has what the New York Times rightly deems " a valuable commodity: time he can use to unite a fractured Republican Party, ramp up his lackluster fund-raising and transform his shoestring primary operation into a general election machine." The landscape still strongly favors the Democrats, but it's much less favorable than it would have been were the Clintons willing to set their own interests aside in favor of those of the party and the progressive movement.
And in the meantime, we find out that Bill Clinton appeared on the Rush Limbaugh show the day of thee Texas primary.
Hart Williams calls it Clinton's Pyrrhic Victory.
Now, like Pyrrhus, she has lost “supporters” in all of this, but has no way of replenishing them (unless there is a large, untapped demographic of “evil-but-uncommitted” Democrats that I’m unaware of). On the other hand, Obama seems to be picking up supporters if ONLY by negation: those Democrats sickened by these Rovian tactics, these distortions, hypocrisies, and flagrant attempts at cheating, pretending themselves the victims, and holding others to a standard that they themselves will not be held to.
You see, the American people are NOT as dumb as politicians and comedians seem to think that they are. If you were to be a fly on the wall at a local diner in Pig’s Knuckle, Arkansas, I think you’d hear plenty of conversations focusing on the brazenness of the post-”victory” Clinton campaign, and the amazing forbearance of the Obama campaign in the face of astonishing provocation.
The only question is: Is it Pyrrhus or Samson we need to be referring to?
