Hillary Rodham Clinton has singlehandedly disabled the Democratic Party for the next eight years. Her husband did a similar thing when he cost the Dems the Congress and later cost Al Gore what should have been a clear path to the White House. It took about ten years for Democrats to recover from the insult.
The Gettysburg moment of February 5 decided the outcome of the primary. Hillary could have continued running an issue oriented campaign. However, she not only attacked Barack on the issues but also his very nature. She cast doubts about Obama's religious affiliation, insulted his supporters as deluded fanatics, and in the ultimate act of betrayal, explicitly stated that John McCain is more qualified to be POTUS than Obama. In essence, HRC became the woman who agreed to Solomon's solution of cutting a baby in half to settle a custody suit. With such open contempt his supporters could never adopt her. It was almost as if she didn't think that she would need us in the fall campaign or actually believed her commercial depiction of the electorate as babies readily guided into bed.
The Dems can't recover. Barack was a resplendent JFK. The personal and racial attacks were sure to come in a general campaign. But to have a white female fellow Democrat slinging calumnies has prepared the nation for when the heavyweight, no condom wearing, straight ATM Republicans get into the mix. Without such preconditioning by HRC the nation would have probably been repulsed at such a spectacle, the way it was when Bill Clinton first dropped his turds in South Carolina.
As it stands, Barack is trying to win a bike with a flat tire. By not putting Hillary Rodham Clinton in check, the party elders as well as the Black superdelegates who held steadfast even as HRC's venom reached toxic levels fractured their party. HRC can't get the nomination without mass defection and Barack is a once beautiful suit that's emerged from the dryer after being laundered.
Needless to say, HRC is finished politically. She can never be a national figure. What she did can't be undone in the next election cycle four years from now and certainly not within the current one. To openly proclaim the legitimacy of the Republican challenger over Obama has sealed her fate and maybe Barack's.
HRC can't be the nominee because of the immediate exodus which would ensue. She can't be a VP because of the nature of her attacks. She can't really throw her support behind Barack without openly marinating in hypocrisy. The scorn she has heaped on Obama and his supporters is irrational to a degree approaching Faye Dunaway's portrayal of Joan Crawford.
Barack would need to craft a political version of Michael Jordan or Tiger Woods in order to win this thing. Chuck Hagel as VP would be a prerequisite for Obama to avoid becoming another Michael Dukakis. Such a bold maneuver could not only help retool and recalibrate the campaign, but revitalize the jes grew spirit which characterized Obama's ascent.
Hillary has effectively ended her chance at higher office. Yet I'm at a loss to understand why the leadership allowed her to wreck the party? Al Gore and John Edwards should have thrown their weight behind Obama after February especially when McCain was the presumptive nominee. Howard Dean should have been more vehement about strict adherence to the rules regarding Florida and Michigan. The leadership should have spoken to big money donors and told them to refrain from putting more money into the Clinton campaign, and given off the record comments to superannuated political reporters like Bob Woodward about the futility of a Clinton resurgence. It was as if the owners of the manor just stood by idly as a mad woman defecated in the kitchen without thinking that eventually they would have to eat there. The Dems are dysfunctional.
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