Four More Years, pt. 3

I have twice pronounced the demise of Hillary Clinton's presidential adventure (here and here), and twice she has snatched victory from the jaws of looming defeat. It occurs to me that rather than Clinton being the plodding dinosaur undone by drastic changes in the political climate brought about by Obama's meteoric candidacy, Obama is much more like the fastest gazelle running from the hungriest lioness.

I've been wrong about Hillary entirely because I underestimated her rapacious craving for power. But her gift for politics as combat makes her the least sympathetic candidate imaginable. As exit polls have repeatedly shown, she is entirely unable to expand her base beyond dumb white men, old white women and Hispanics (with at least one notable exception as of late.)

But it is Clinton's avarice for authority solely for its own sake that makes her so dangerous to Democrats. Simply put, she would rather lose to Sen. John McCain than to Obama, and she will rend her own party asunder for the opportunity to do just that. Nothing else would explain her fumble-handed apology to blacks one week, closely followed by "Wright-gate" the next.

To be sure, the entire Obama-Jeremiah Wright kerfuffle - whatever its merits relative to what others said (to include conservatives) post-9/11 - originated in the Stygian depths of her campaign. (And for those who believe this came out of RNC Central, ask yourselves two questions: why Republicans and why now? That this allows Hillary to play the race "chord" in her dissonant guitar solo, and the fact that it came up now as opposed to October, bespeak something straight from the Clinton War Room.)

As superdelegates defect and opportunities for her to game the electoral system ebb away, Clinton seems ready to play the role of a latter-day William Calley, as she is all too eager to burn the village to save it. She is the political equivalent of a suicide bomber, or more correctly, something quite like the stereotypical shopping mall shooter - willing to turn the gun on herself so as to evade the consequences of her actions. However the story of how Democrats spent 2008 plays out, it will end with a bang.