Redstate

By Pejman Yousefzadeh Posted in 2008 | Hillary Clinton | Loser — Comments (8) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

Whatever else happens during the course of this election cycle, we have already won one victory. And by "we," I mean "all of us."

Here it is: The Clintons have been sidelined from the fast track to power.

I write this knowing that Barack Obama will make a significantly tougher opponent against John McCain than will Hillary Clinton. Yes, I know of the demographic suppositions that state that Hillary would have been the stronger Democratic nominee given her wider appeal in the Midwest and in some of the southern states. I don't buy it, though. As the primary and caucus season has shown, the Clintons' campaign machine has a propensity to sputter and halt in all of the wrong places. They go through money like most people go through socks. The campaign staff is disorganized and dysfunctional in its intra-staff relations. And the candidate herself is flawed.

She is flawed because she campaigns not for some great cause, but for herself. Just herself. Only herself. Sure, she has her policy interests--health care being the most prominent example--but at the end of the day, Hillary Clinton was, is and always shall be in politics for Hillary Clinton alone. Power is her central organizing principle and always has been. She came into the race as "the inevitable nominee" and was determined to run her campaign as if it was a coronation. She was clearly shocked, outraged and offended that Barack Obama, in his upstart way, elbowed her aside and captured the prize she had lusted after for so long.

Of course, at the end of the day, it should surprise no one that Obama was able to win the Democratic nomination instead of Hillary. He had a far better organization than she did and the people in his organization both understood the rules surrounding the Democratic Presidential nomination process better than Hillary's team did and was filled with fewer prima donnas, thus ensuring that the focus would always remain on Obama rather than on any drama within his staff structure. Meanwhile, the Clinton campaign was subsumed in ignorance surrounding the nomination process, couldn't use the fundraising structure of the Democratic Party or the Internet nearly as well to stay competitive financially and regularly drowned out Clinton's message with stories of fights between Harold Ickes and Mark Penn, Harold Ickes and Patti Solis Doyle, Mark Penn and Patti Solis Doyle, Bill Clinton and everybody on the planet and . . . well, you get the picture.

Obama's "Hope and Change" campaign message is a shallow and empty one when examined closely. But credit where it is due; it is a message. What was Hillary Clinton's message? "Elect me because I was a First Lady and it would be really really cool if a former First Lady could be elected as the first female President of the United States." When it became clear that this approach was . . . er . . . less than optimal, she tried on various different personae; the "Fighter," the "Populist" the "Woman Who Survived Sniper Fire at the Airport in Tuzla." None of these approaches worked because they were so transparently fake and some were even faker than others. Voters, not being stupid, saw through the whole charade. The rest is history.

Read on . . .

How very satisfying all of this is. The Clintons have always been venal, power-grubbing, status-hungry and utterly and completely selfish in being willing to put their interests and whatever drama they have been involved in before the interests of others and before the country's interests as well. Never did this become so clear as in the just-concluded fight for the Democratic Presidential nomination, though to be sure, it should have been made clear long ago. Was any of the behavior exhibited by the Clintons any different than what we saw in the 1990s? Didn't we have enough back then of their serial willingness--eagerness, even--to vault themselves over and above all other people and all other causes? We got put through the muck of Whitewater, the crassness of cattle futures, the slime of the FBI file transfer and impeachment all because the Clintons believed that the dignity of the country was nowhere near as important as their own personal interests. They carried this behavior into the fight for the Democratic Presidential nomination and now, likely, have the gall to be shocked that the country has made it clear it has had enough of them.

Of course, there are many of us who told all the rest of you so. We were called "The Vast Right Wing Conspiracy" but if anything has been made clear during the course of this Democratic nomination fight, it was that its story should be titled "Maybe The Vast Right Wing Conspiracy Had A Point." In their desperate attempt to regain and reacquire power, the Clintons clearly, explicitly and shamelessly exploited racial issues to try to drag Barack Obama down to their level. Democratic partisans professed to be shocked, shocked by this behavior but the only people who weren't surprised were the very Vast Right Wing Conspiracy members who kept trying to tell the naïve and credulous that this is what the Clintons are like. This is what the Clintons have always been like. This is what the Clintons always will be like. Nothing and no one is more important than they are, as far as they are concerned. Their collective egotism and their willingness to rip asunder and destroy anything and everyone in their way is as appalling as it is constant.

And that, of course, is why I was not in the least bit surprised when I read this. I know that the piece relies heavily on anonymous sources but does anyone actually believe anymore that Bill Clinton doesn't fit the profile Todd Purdum drew up for him? I mean, doesn't the entire story read a little bit familiarly for all of us who remember the kind of character flaws and deficiencies the former President brought into the Oval Office and into our public life? Does anyone really believe he has changed? The only change that I appear to see is an increased willingness on the part of Bill Clinton to yell, scream and insult those who don't buy into his line--a population that now includes "most sentient human beings." Must suck that the former Boy Wonder no longer gets his way and has now been reduced to the role of Angry Old Man. But then, some people have serious problems accepting when their time is past, don't they?

The only thing regretful about the Clintons departure from center stage--as I alluded to at the beginning of this piece--is that Barack Obama will present John McCain with a significantly tougher race for the Presidency. And yes, it would have been tremendously satisfying for Republicans to be able to have beaten the Clintons in the general election. But gift horses should not be looked in the mouth. For far too long, the Clintons have poisoned our public discourse and even their former Democratic allies now understand (at least one hopes) that Clintons really were and are as bad as their critics made them out to be.

Good riddance to them. As a nation, we always deserved better. And at long last, we realized it.