Discouraged and disgruntled

I know how Maha feels. I’m discouraged too.
It has been clear since before the Texas primary that Hillary Clinton can’t win the Democratic nomination for president, but the national media keeps going along with her charade that she still has a chance and that it is a tight race. For each primary race since then, Hillary has carefully set the bar low enough that she can easily cross it, while ignoring the fact that it gets her no closer to the nomination. She has to win every contest here on out by 20 points or better to even come close to catching Obama. She won Pennsylvania by 10 points and declared it a great victory and the media went right along.

By contrast, the bar is constantly set higher and higher for Obama. He doesn’t have to just stay close in Pennsylvania. He has to win it outright. Winning in North Carolina won’t be enough, he has to win Indiana too.
Hillary is set to win by less than 10 points in Indiana and lose North Carolina by a wider margin, but she will play up the Indiana victory as a huge defeat for Obama and one more excuse for her to press on.
If Hillary would just act like she’s on the same team with Obama and quit trying to tear him, and by extension the Democratic Party, down then together they could shred John McCain. McCain is a terrible candidate. But if they just let him coast until November while they concentrate on clawing at one another, he will build up a following that will be harder and harder to peel away the closer we get to the election.

I used to like Hillary and I respected her a great deal. Now I can hardly stand to listen to her speak and usually change the channels if she comes on. She is starting to veer into Ralph Nader territory for me. It would be the ultimate betrayal of her principles if she helps McCain to win, just like Nader betrayed everything he once stood for by helping worst president ever George W. Bush to defeat environmental champion Al Gore.

I’ve lived through too many presidential elections where I’ve seen the Democratic nominee get slimed mercilessly by the Republican spin machine and the compliant media. Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, John Kerry and now Barack Obama. People don’t even know who they are before the start of the campaign and by the end they can’t say their names without spitting. That is how good the Republican spin machine is at villifying people.
The Republican base is demotivated this cycle because of the war and the economy. But all they need is the flimsiest excuse to vote against someone like Obama or Kerry or Dukakis and people like Karl Rove and Lee Atwater specialize in giving them that excuse.
They don’t need help from Hillary Clinton, but they are getting plenty of help anyway this year.