I, Personally, Would Have Told Her To Go Pound Sand

This morning while I was working out all the talking heads were fixated on the theme that Hillary Clinton has some huge amount of power with which she can bargain for the Vice Presidency. There seems to be this idea that Obama needs Hillary. I don't know where it started, but the same people who were convinced, a year ago, that Hillary was inevitable are now convinced that the only hope for Obama is to put Hillary on the ticket. They're all over the "Hillary has 18 million voters" bit, as if 18 million people were following her around like goslings.

Yeah, well, allow me to take the contrary position. Allow me to suppose that Hillary Clinton, for all intents and purposes, might as well move to Fiji.

Consider this: Barack Obama, however you feel about him, is a cultural phenomenon. My 85 year old Republican mother has read both his books and watches him whenever he's on TV. He fills the largest arena in whatever town he visits. He's all anyone on either side of the aisle can talk about.

Then there's Hillary. I'm not sure there's ever been a politician who talked with such open scorn about an intra-party rival as Clinton has about Obama. She called him unfit to be Commander-in-Chief, for goodness sake, and she did it on camera. On the night when Obama clinched the nomination she gave a speech claiming that she was the legitimate winner. And now she and her devotees are circulating petitions trying to muscle her into the Vice Presidential slot. The level of arrogance is stunning.

Anyone on Hillary's staff with an instinct for career preservation should have packed up and got the hell out of campaign headquarters as soon as Hillary started talking Tuesday night. I'd have got over to Obama HQ and volunteered to answer phones or stuff envelopes or scrub the bathroom floor just to make damned sure everyone understood that I'm not with the crazy lady. I'm a team player, a Democrat first and I only worked for her because I needed a job really, really badly and I don't want my career to end just because of that one, unfortunate association.

Hillary lost. In one of the biggest flame-outs in political history, she turned a 50 point lead, a couple of hundred million dollars, and 100% name recognition into defeat. She got beat by a political nobody with a scary-sounding name and ears the size of car doors. She ran what is surely one of the most belligerently stupid campaigns in history, was wrong (in the eyes of her party and 60% of Americans polled) on the biggest single foreign policy issue of her generation, and responded by tearing down her party's chosen candidate with the viciousness of a Republican 527.

Now, for some reason, everyone think he needs her.

Listen: Obama doesn't need her or her big money friends. He raised $300 million a hundred bucks at a time, signing up a couple of million small contributors. Lest you forget your history, that's the kind of financial base Ronald Reagan built, that has carried Republicans to victory for 20 years. When Obama stops by to speak, lines form 10 blocks long. Hillary's big-money loyalists aren't going to stay out of this election. They're not in the political money business because they think Hillary's a doll. They're in it because it buys them access and influence and status, and there's not one of them who's going to stay over at Hillary's pity party when Obama's rockin' the house down the block. They go with the winner.

As for those 18 million voters, well, maybe there are a few who are going to vote for John McCain. Maybe they're that angry. But here's what they're going to have to swallow: No comprehensive healthcare; war forever in Iraq; bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran; anti-abortion judges; and more tax cuts for rich people. When they go to the McCain dinners, they're going to be seated next to people who don't understand why we haven't put Jesus's image on the dollar bill.

I'm going to be lunching out for the next six months on bets I made a year ago that Hillary wouldn't be the candidate, so we're going to have to find something besides lunch to wager. But right now I'll take all comers: By election day, those 18 million embittered Hillary fanatics are going to be back in the Democratic fold, no matter how pissed they are right now.

Let me say it again: She lost. Given the lead she started with and the advantages she enjoyed, she lost in a particularly humiliating and amateurish way. She's John Kerry, except less successful. She doesn't have any standing. If I were in charge, I'd tell her politely that she needs to sit her ass back down in the Senate and do what she's told. I'd tell her that if she behaves herself I might invite her to the inaugural ball, but so-help-me-God if that husband of hers acts up security's going to toss the both of them out onto the street and they can watch from the tourist side of the fence.

Obama, of course, is classier than I am. And he's being smart and practical, two things which haven't traditionally, been my core competencies.  (What I'm good at: half-baked ideas and picking the place to have lunch. Hard to believe I'm not President, isn't it?) But I've spent the last couple of days listening to the chattering classes on TV talking about Hillary's power and might and all I can think is: she's done. It's over. The Clintons are yesterday's news and, assuming Obama gets elected, they're as relevant as Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford were once Reagan took over. A new broom sweeps clean, as they say, and the Clinton's are headed for the dustbin of history.

Comments

[Wally]

I just bet the Silver Oak national sales rep a mag of Silver Oak that Obama wins in November. Frank, if you want to put your hands in the air and step. away. from. McBush, I'll share the spoils.

[fish]

McCain! Never underestimate the gullibility and craven cowardice of your fellow Americans!

Of course until somebody finally drives a wooden stake into her sternum and she dissolves into the the loathsome dust thatspawned her I still think that she will find a way to weasel her way back into the White House!

[Tom]

I think, Mr. Wally, you should invite me, too.

[Mrs. A]

ahem... and ME TOO!!!

[Candy Man]

"When Obama stops by to speak, lines form 10 blocks long."

Can somebody please tell me what it is he says when he stops to speak. Thank you.

[NewMexiKen]

This post is surely among your very best Tom.

[Sir Edmund]

(What I'm good at: half-baked ideas and picking the place to have lunch. Hard to believe I'm not President, isn't it?)

The reason you're not President is that half-baked ideas and choosing where to have lunch are legislative, not executive, skills.

[Frank]

Hey, I already predicted on my blog several months ago that Obama was going to win it all. I say we all meet up in Louisville to party with Tom and Mrs. A., who I love more every time she comments. She has to have a great sense of humor to have been married to Tom this long.

[Adam]

I agree with every point, save that I'm not sure "over" is quite the word; the Clinton name will probably be around for a while yet, much like the recently-fallen Kennedy - a name and an influence in some circles.

But they just hit the roof of their influence, that's for sure.

Then again, how many of us would have said the same thing about Nixon once upon a time?

[Wally]

Mrs. FA is hereby invited. Tom is invited by default. I wouldn't trust me alone with Mrs. A.

[Squidley]

Um, Tom, not to pop your balloon or anything, but just which of McCain's supporters do you think are fundamentalists? He has made his career ticking off and alienating everyone on the conservative side of the aisle, and most of the "Christian" vote (as it were) went elsewhere. There are only a couple of reasons he has any "conservative" support at all, most of them being the (R) after his name and the fact that He's Not Obama Or Hillary.

So now the choice has been narrowed down to the Democratic candidate, McCain, and the socialist one, your jug-eared messiah. Even so, the difference between them is paper-thin: both will work to further dismantle the historical, existing America. McCain's choices in judges will be slightly less liberal, and he won't take the troops out of Iraq on January 21. Other than that....

We're in for a messed-up four years.

[Wally]

Where does all this "Obama is a socialist" stuff come from? At some point in time the courts decided that a corporation was an entity much like a citizen but without the right to vote. Corporations can, however,influence elections and the legislative bodies by injecting large amounts of cash into the process. When programs like tax cuts, easing environmental restrictions or tariffs on competitive imported goods are debated, they are touted as good for business or, if you will, our corporate citizens. When programs like tax credits, Head Start, college tuition grants or health care for the indigent are debated they are called handouts to those who don't carry their weight. Considering that many corporations are simply regular citizens who have incorporated because it lowers their taxes we need to re-examine how the "corporate citizen" became the more preferred entity than the American Citizen. Socialism, to me, is the system where the government assumes a greater degree of responsibility for the care of the citizenry. The Democratic Party should just be moving our "Socialism" from the corporate to the "real" citizen. Corporations with their money and power have always seemed to be able to take care of themselves and when they don't they seem to be able to get the government handout.