Yes, She Can

By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: August 12, 2008

WASHINGTON

While Obama was spending three hours watching "The Dark Knight" five time
zones away, and going to a fund-raiser featuring "Aloha attire" and
Hawaiian pupus, Hillary was busy planning her convention.

You can almost hear her mind whirring: She's amazed at how easy it was to
snatch Denver away from the Obama saps. Like taking candy from a baby,
except Beanpole Guy doesn't eat candy. In just a couple of weeks, Bill and
Hill were able to drag No Drama Obama into a swamp of Clinton drama.

Now they've made Barry's convention all about them - their dissatisfaction
and revisionism and barely disguised desire to see him fail. Whatever
insincere words of support the Clintons muster, their primal scream gets
louder: He can't win! He can't close the deal! We told you so!

Hillary's orchestrating a play within the play in Denver. Just as Hamlet
used the device to show that his stepfather murdered his father, Hillary
will try to show the Democrats they chose the wrong savior.

Her former aide Howard Wolfson fanned the divisive flames Monday on ABC
News, arguing that Hillary would have beaten Obama in Iowa and become the
nominee if John Edwards's affair had come out last year - an assertion
contradicted by a University of Iowa survey showing that far more Edwards
supporters had Obama as their second choice.

Hillary feels no guilt about encouraging her supporters to mess up Obama's
big moment, thus undermining his odds of beating John McCain and improving
her odds of being the nominee in 2012.

She's obviously relishing Hillaryworld's plans to have multiple rallies in
Denver, to take out TV and print ads and to hold up signs in the hall that
read "Denounce Nobama's Coronation."

In a video of a closed California fund-raiser on July 31 that surfaced on
YouTube, Hillary was clearly receptive to having her name put in
nomination and a roll-call vote.

She said she thought it would be good for party unity if her gals felt
"that their voices are heard." But that's disingenuous. Hillary was the
one who raised the roll-call idea at the end of May with Democrats, who
were urging her to face the math. She said she wanted it for Chelsea,
oblivious to how such a vote would dim Obama's star turn. Ever since she
stepped aside in June, she's been telling people privately that there
might have to be "a catharsis" at the convention, signaling she wants a
Clinton crescendo.

Bill continues to howl at the moon - and any reporters in the vicinity -
about Obama; he's starting to make King Lear look like Ryan Seacrest.

The way the Clintons see it, there's nothing wrong with a couple making
plans for their future, is there? That's the American way and, as their
pal Mark Penn pointed out, they have American roots while Obama "is not at
his center fundamentally American in his thinking and in his values."

The Clintons know that a lot of Democrats are muttering that their
solipsistic behavior is "disgusting." But they're too filled with
delicious schadenfreude at the wave of buyer's remorse that has swept the
Democratic Party; many Democrats are questioning whether Obama is fighting
back hard enough against McCain, and many are wondering, given his
inability to open up a lead in a country fed up with Republicans, if race
will be an insurmountable factor.

Some Democrats wish that Obama had told the Clintons to "get in the box"
or get lost if they can't show more loyalty, rather than giving them
back-to-back, prime-time speaking gigs at the convention on Tuesday and
Wednesday. Al Gore clipped their wings in 2000, triggering their wrath by
squeezing both the president and New York Senate candidate into speaking
slots the first night and then ushering them out of L.A.

Wednesday will be all Bill. The networks will rerun his churlish comments
from Africa about Obama's readiness to lead and his South Carolina
meltdowns. TV will have more interest in a volcanic ex-president than a
genteel veep choice.

Obama also allowed Hillary supporters to insert an absurd statement into
the platform suggesting that media sexism spurred her loss and that
"demeaning portrayals of women ... dampen the dreams of our daughters."
This, even though postmortems, including the new raft of campaign memos
leaked by Clintonistas to The Atlantic - another move that undercuts Obama
- finger Hillary's horrendous management skills.

Besides the crashing egos and screeching factions working at cross
purposes, Joshua Green writes in the magazine, Hillary's "hesitancy and
habit of avoiding hard choices exacted a price that eventually sank her
chances at the presidency."

It would have been better to put this language in the platform: "A woman
who wildly mismanages and bankrupts a quarter-of-a-billion-dollar campaign
operation, and then blames sexism in society, will dampen the dreams of
our daughters."

                R\%/itt



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