Hillary the Traitor

Hillary Billary Clinton is a traitor to the Democratic Party. For several days running she has preferred John McCain as Commander in Chief to Barack Obama. As Rachel Madow said the first time this surfaced, this is something someone says who wants to be McCain's vice president, not what a Democratic candidate says about another.

Some say, including Clinton, that this is fair testing of the party's candidate, and he'd get this or worse from the Republicans. Jonathan Chait, senior editor at The New Republic, writes this:

Still, there are a few flaws in Clinton's trial-by-smear method. The first is that her attacks on Obama are not a fair proxy for what he'd endure in the general election, because attacks are harder to refute when they come from within one's own party. Indeed, Clinton is saying almost exactly the same things about Obama that McCain is: He's inexperienced, lacking in substance, unequipped to handle foreign policy. As The Washington Monthly's Christina Larson has pointed out, in recent weeks the nightly newscasts have consisted of Clinton attacking Obama, McCain attacking Obama, and then Obama trying to defend himself and still get out his own message. If Obama's the nominee, he won't have a high-profile Democrat validating McCain's message every day.

And this is happening when Clinton has no way to win enough delegates to get the nomination, and almost no way within the rules to get it either. Chiat sums it up:

Clinton's path to the nomination, then, involves the following steps: kneecap an eloquent, inspiring, reform-minded young leader who happens to be the first serious African American presidential candidate (meanwhile cementing her own reputation for Nixonian ruthlessness) and then win a contested convention by persuading party elites to override the results at the polls. The plan may also involve trying to seat the Michigan and Florida delegations, after having explicitly agreed that the results would not count toward delegate totals. Oh, and her campaign has periodically hinted that some of Obama's elected delegates might break off and support her. I don't think she'd be in a position to defeat Hitler's dog in November, let alone a popular war hero.

Some Clinton supporters, like my friend (and historian) David Greenberg, have been assuring us that lengthy primary fights go on all the time and that the winner doesn't necessarily suffer a mortal wound in the process. But Clinton's kamikaze mission is likely to be unusually damaging. Not only is the opportunity cost--to wrap up the nomination, and spend John McCain into the ground for four months--uniquely high, but the venue could not be less convenient. Pennsylvania is a swing state that Democrats will almost certainly need to win in November, and Clinton will spend seven weeks and millions of dollars there making the case that Obama is unfit to set foot in the in the White House. You couldn't create a more damaging scenario if you tried.

I had assumed I would be voting for the Democrat for President this year. I still will be, if there is one on the ballot. I know I won't be voting for Hillary Clinton.