The Workday Liberal

As the Clinton campaign swirls the drain to their inevitable doom we see them desperately throwing out a myriad of arguments and excuses. One of the most prominent talking points lately has been to dwell upon the experience and electability of Senator McCain while making the argument that only Clinton can win against him in November. We've seen variations on this theme since immediately prior to Ohio and Texas and the much noted Clinton assertion that both she and McCain passed the commander in chief threshold, but Obama?... Not so much. The latest permutation on this talking point came from Bill Clinton yesterday when he said:

"She can win this race, and we have got to win. And she will win in Florida. And I must say that this new strategy of denying and disempowering and disenfranchising the voters in Florida and Michigan is I believe a terrible mistake."

In effect Clinton is saying that if the Democratic party follows the rules that we will lose the general election. We must bend and distort the rules in order to favor the Clintons in order to have any hope of defeating McCain. This position is nearly the definition of amorality: being indifferent to right or wrong, being for or against this or that action solely dependent upon whether it benefits Senator Clinton or not. But what else would we expect from Bill... and now it seems to have permeated the entire Clinton campaign. These statements on the Michigan & Florida debacles are just embarrassing when paired with the quotes and the signed affirmations by Hillary last fall that the votes in these states were meaningless. Bill continues to construct the logical fallacy that ONLY Hillary can defeat McCain in November by saying:

“Sen. McCain is not going to be easy to beat; he has always run well in Michigan. He will run pretty well in Florida. She can win. Look, if we win these four states we will win the White House; there is no point in doing this if we are not going to win."

It seems to me that the talking point that only Hillary can defeat McCain is the height of conceit by the Clinton campaign. It's not like Hillary is a fantastic campaigner with no baggage and all the answers who will sweep the electoral college map in November. There MUST be a reason that the Republican machine is pulling for Hillary to be coronated the nominee, and I don't think it's because they are all going to cheerlead her to victory in the general election. It's because Obama is imminently electable, does inspire, was right about Iraq, and offers hope. McCain and the rest of the Republican establishment know who is most likely to defeat them in November and they are not out there trying to take down Clinton in case you haven't noticed.

Steve Benen at The Carpetbagger Report tries his best to put a positive interpretation on the logic which seems to drive the Clinton campaign by writing:

[A]t Clinton HQ right now, a team of advisers are likely thinking, “If Obama’s the nominee, Democrats lose. We may be the only ones who realize it, and we may only have a 10% shot, but we need to keep fighting, keep tearing Obama down, and keep this damaging process going in order to save the party and protect the party’s interests.”

It seems to me that this is a self fulfilling prophecy. The Clinton campaign says that only they are electable in the fall campaign and in order to be proven right they are savaging the evident Democratic nominee, doing their absolute best to make Senator Obama unelectable, just like they say he is. Hillary will look on the smoldering ruins of the Obama campaign the day after the general election and exult at the final vindication of her attempt to save the Democratic party from itself. She will destroy her party in order to save it... if she can't lead the Democratic party to victory then she will see to it that no one will.

The Clintons are doing real and lasting damage to their legacy in the party which once held them in very high esteem. The attempted destruction of Obama and the damage being wrought on the evident Democratic nominee by the Clinton machine will not soon be forgotten by many many party loyalists, like myself, who were once die hard and longstanding Clinton supporters. The sooner she ends this self destructive campaign the faster we can put this all behind us. Yet it is evident that Senator Clinton has no intention whatsoever of ending this train wreck, even going so far as to dwell upon the Reverend Wright controversy in various appearances today.

Of course she would go there. At this point, what else can we expect?