American Patrol

Hillary Clinton's comments to McNews have amplified and expanded on the offensive implications of her campaign's conference call this week and turned what might have been a minor story into the major campaign sound bite of the moment. Touting her broad base among "hard-working Americans" (who she helpfully translated as "white Americans" in her very next phrase) and "whites... who had not completed college" as a sign of her superior electibility, Senator Clinton sprayed a veritable shitfroth of racism, anti-intellectualism, statistical inaccuracy,and sheer squirrel's-ass craziness straight into the media mainstream.

It is now exceedingly clear that Air America's Rachel Maddow is right if exceedingly kind when she notes that the Clinton campaign is "post-rational." Clinton's arguments that she is the superior nominee, with their exit poll demographics and electoral vote maps (UPDATE: on full display HERE), have always been based on the faulty premise that voter behavior in the primaries is 100% determinative of voter behavior in the general election. This premise, the logical detritus of the long disproven "inevitable nominee running a general election campaign from day one" strategy, is, to be blunter than I've seen anyone else be about it, complete unsupported horseshit-- nowhere in history is there any evidence of such a correlation.

Accepting this premise is a complete prerequisite to accepting that Hillary Clinton has any continued viability as a candidate. To accept it, however, is to follow Goldilocks down the rabbit hole (if I may abuse allusions as badly as she does). To reject it is to be confronted with the fact that her continuing campaign has less to do with her concern for the future of the party than it does with her "tough fighter" self image, her lust for power, and her sense of entitlement. At some point, the depths to which Senator Clinton is willing to go to continue this exercise in political narcissism should, and to me already has, disqualify her for any further office whatsoever.

I repeat: this is as disgusting as it is desperate, and it needs to end now.