If I had a dollar for every time I have been dead wrong about matters political over the last year, I could buy a nice used car. It happened again Sunday afternoon. In the midst of a discussion about the recent unpleasantness among the two Democratic candidates, I made the statement that I was convinced the worst was over and that you would see the two camps starting to make nice. I based this opinion on reports over the weekend that senior Clinton staffers had threatened to jump ship if her continued campaign was going to be focused on trashing Barack Obama.
Boy, was I wrong. Instead of turning down the heat, both campaigns ramped up the attacks on each other in what is starting to look like some sort of scorched earth strategy.
In a blatant effort to change the subject from her "misstatement" (spelled "l-i-e") about dodging sniper fire in Bosnia, Clinton re-introduced the subject of Rev. Jeremiah Wright, a story which had begun to fade from the headlines. The Obama team, for their part, seem to have decided they can and will play hardball with the best of them, and they proved it today by issuing a statement calling Clinton out on her Bosnia embellishment and jumping on the Rev. Wright bandwagon.
With a month to go before the Pennsylvania Primary and more than three months before the convention in Denver, one wonders if there will be anything left of the Democratic Party when it's all said and done. The traditional Democratic coalition is at least at this point lying in tatters. Hillary's bringing up the Rev. Wright topic again today is bound to infuriate the African American community, a group that Bill and Hillary have already alienated by their behavior since the South Carolina primary.
Also today, Clinton surrogates continued to insist that the former first lady is sitting pretty and attacked the news media for - almost as one - saying her chances of being the nominee are now next to nothing. Their claims ranged from the silly to the ridiculous. In the silly category are the claims she is more electable or that Obama's lead is not legitimate because Florida and Michigan are not counting. The ridiculous was today's assertion by a Clinton crony that she is really ahead because if you add up the Electoral College votes in the states that she won she has more than Obama.
I won't bother to comment on the idiocy of that logic since there's no guarantee that the winner of the primary will go on to win that state in the general election. But does it strike anyone else as supremely ironic that Democrats took such issue with the Electoral College process in the razor-close 2000 and 2004 elections and now when she needs a straw to grasp and it can be twisted to make her appear to be on top, Sen. Clinton has no problem embracing that same Electoral College?
Then again, it is no more outlandish or disingenuous than Sen. Clinton's sudden concern that the poor voters of Florida and Michigan not be disenfranchised. She was not concerned with their plight months earlier - before she needed those votes - when she and all of the other candidates agreed that neither state would count.
Contrary to my prediction on Sunday, it appears it's going to continue to get get nastier and sink lower out there.
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