I didn’t want to watch Hillary Clinton’s “victory” speech last night, but I had to. Since I was analyzing it on TV, I figured I would be derelict in my journalistic duties if I took a nap or switched the studio monitor over to the Celtics game (as I desperately wanted to) while the erstwhile First Lady droned on. A few observations: 1) Hillary has come to resemble a soldier of Imperial Japan stumbling through the jungles of Okinawa in 1961 while clutching a picture of the Emperor. Everyone knows it’s over except her. When she talks like this is still a competitive race, she beclowns herself. Although, to be honest, I find it impossible not to take a certain frisson of pleasure in seeing the Clintons so thoroughly sacrifice their dignity. Not that maintaining personal dignity was ever an obsession of theirs, but it’s still fun. 2) What has become of Terry McAuliffe? In the good old days when the Clintons were riding high, he would shake down billionaires and movie stars to fund the couple’s ambitions. And yet last night, we had Hillary talking about some 12 year-old Kentuckian who hawked his bicycle and video games so that he might bestow a few hundred dollars on the financially bereft Clinton campaign. If the Clintons had any honor, they would personally refund the kid’s money since the race is over and they have tens of million of dollars in the bank. Then again, if the Clintons are looking for a demographic gullible enough to believe that Hillary still has a chance, pre-teens are likely to be their core constituency. 3) On air, our pre-speech conversation centered on whether or not Hillary would extend an olive branch to Barack Obama. Everyone else thought yes. I thought no. The Clintons aren’t into extending olive branches to their political rivals. So I felt personally vindicated when Hillary declared that America needed a president who would be “ready, willing and able” to do the job. Those are our talking points! We’re the ones always saying that Obama lacks the experience for the job. In a competitive primary season, it would make sense for Hillary to draw this contrast since her additional four years in the senate maker her oh-so-much-more qualified than Obama. But since the nomination fight is over and she has lost, it surprised some people that she would attack Barack Obama’s Achilles heel. 4) The only question left regarding Hillary is whether the party will forgive her for fighting so hard for the nomination, even after the matter was settled. Even by Clinton standards, it’s rather surprising that she introduced this whole “sexist” angle after Obama had become the presumptive nominee. Given the stridency and sensitivity of the feminist lobby, that issue actually could damage Obama in the general election. Then again, Democrats should have learned after the Clintons invented triangulation some 13 years ago that party loyalty was never an obsession for them. So maybe the former first couple will be able to outride this latest act of perfidy, too. 5) The Fall of the House of Clinton – finally! Just as we forecast in January!
