While I’m disappointed with last night’s results, I have to admit that I share Kos’s enthusiasm for the Democratic nomination process. While John McCain is calling all of his lobbyist cronies begging for campaign cash, the Democrats are still traveling around the country building up campaign infrastructure that will serve them well in the general election.

Having said that, as this process has continued, I’ve pretty much lost most of my respect for Hillary Clinton. Compared to McCain she’s a saint, but I’ve found her campaign’s strategy of throwing every scurrilous charge they can think of at their opponent while whining about how the press treats them to be disgraceful and pathetic respectively. A lot of Democratic partisans love the fact that the Clintons fight dirty (“don’t bring a knife to a gunfight”), but I’m not so partisan that I’m enamored of cheap shots and overall nastiness when it’s done by “our side”. Maybe I’d feel differently if Bill and Hillary had a history of using these sorts of tricks to achieve progressive goals, but the past 16 years of Washington experience has been marked by foolish decisions and shameless pandering. It’s telling that the same Hillary Clinton that has spent her entire Senate career giving George W. Bush the benefit of the doubt is eager to assume the worst regarding every bit of dirt her campaign can dig up about Barack Obama.

As far as where things go next, it’s still clear to me that Hillary Clinton doesn’t have a shot at getting the nomination for herself. Last night’s wins barely scratched the surface of Obama’s pledged delegate lead. Her only real chances are to beat Obama by margins that she’s thus far been incapable of amassing or cross her fingers and hope that Obama is brought down by some scandal (gotta love the irony that the Whitewater couple might be pinning their hopes on an equally vague real estate pseudo-scandal). Other than those two options, the only others are that she might win with help from superdelegates or the delegates from Florida/Michigan. If either of those two things happened, I’d have a hard time supporting her as nominee (I’m not a big fan of political coups).

When the math isn’t there for her to beat Obama in the pledged delegate race, I don’t really see what she’s accomplishing by staying in the race. In order to catch up to Obama in pledged delegates, she needs to beat him by roughly 60/40 across the board, but Clinton hasn’t cracked 60% anywhere besides Arkansas. Meanwhile, Obama has beaten Clinton by +60% margins thirteen times. Even if she wins every remaining primary, Clinton hasn’t shown the level of support necessary to turn this thing around.

At this point, I think Clinton’s goal isn’t to win the nomination but to chip away at the Obama’s support until she can maneuver her way into the VP slot. The month and a half between now and the Pennsylvania primary is going to feel like an eternity.

This might be old news, but funny as hell nonetheless. During a press conference in late 2006, Barack Obama inadvertently embarrassed a reporter in front of a girl he was trying to impress. The reporter later turned around and bitched about it on his paper’s op-ed page :

Obama owes me a public apology for making me look like a court jester and for blocking my shot.

Until that time, Hillary or Giuliani will get my vote.

Here’s what happened next :

As Mother Jones put it, “Presidential material? Definitely.”

It seems to me that with the Clinton campaign in circular firing squad mode, a lot of the things Hillary is saying on the campaign trail just make her look bad. For example, there’s her boast that the

Democratic Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton suggested Monday she’ll press on with the campaign after Tuesday’s crucial primaries, arguing that momentum is on her side despite 11 straight losses to rival Sen. Barack Obama.

“I’m just getting warmed up,” Clinton told reporters, looking ahead to a busy day of campaign events in Ohio and Texas where polls show a close race ahead of Tuesday’s primaries.

Two months after the Iowa caucuses, I’d think campaigns should be well past their “getting warmed up” phases. That might explain why Obama was won the last 11 contests.

Worse yet, Clinton seems to have made the mistake of actually believing her talking points and, in the process, is doing the GOP’s work for them.

Hillary Clinton told reporters that both she and the presumtive Republican nominee John McCain offer the experience to be ready to tackle any crisis facing the country under their watch, but Barack Obama simply offers more rhetoric. “I think you’ll be able to imagine many things Senator McCain will be able to say,” she said. “He’s never been the president, but he will put forth his lifetime of experience. I will put forth my lifetime of experience. Senator Obama will put forth a speech he made in 2002.” Clinton was referring to Obama’s anti-war speech he delivered in Chicago before entering the United States Senate.

Clinton may think this line of attack serves her well in the primary, but it’ll kill her in the general (which is probably why she polls worse against McCain than Obama). The problem is that Clinton’s must-vaunted “experience” is trumped by McCain’s. Or, to put this in bumper sticker terms, here’s what Hillary’s talking points look like when applied to the general election :

Which is why Obama’s strategy is just better all around. All the experience in the world doesn’t matter if you need to make a crucial decision (like whether or not to invade Iraq) and you’re completely wrong. Which means, at least as far as the Iraq war is concerned, the talking points would look more like this :



A much better place to be for the Democrats this November, I’d think.