Hillary’s in.  Well, whoopty-doo.

Forgive me, but aside from huge money and name recognition, which is
all usually swell, and as much as I’d like to see the Democrats take
the White House, and as badly as the US could use more women holding
important
public offices, and while I’d enjoy being proven wrong… let’s look at the basic math.

Everybody must surely realize that 30 to 40 percent of this country — the same hard-skulled
core of lunatics who still support our Criminal-in-Chief — will simply
never, ever vote for Hillary Clinton.

Of the remainder who might vote for Hillary, at least half were opposed to the war from the outset.  Remember, the Iraq War
was never particularly popular; Zogby figured 42% of the US was opposed before the first bomb ever fell; most of these, obviously, were Democrats.  And Hillary, these early war opponents will remember, was an
active, enthusiastic accomplice to the crime.  (See below.)

If these numbers are even close, then Hillary has a maximum of roughly 35% of the electorate who could conceivably support her
with gusto.

In short: if Hillary wins the nomination, the Democrats just ain’t likely to win the White House in 2008.

I mean, come on — the GOP death machine could prop up the corpse of Augusto flicking Pinochet and get 35 percent.  About that many people still support George W. Bush,
for gods’ sake, despite Iraq, New Orleans, warrantless spying, and a
dazzling array of further crimes and incompetence that could fill this
page.

Now, I’m not saying Hillary has been treated fairly, or that she’s one
tenth the hellion she’s made out to be.  I’m not siding
with the contemptible nutjobs who long ago convinced themselves
that she’s a Chinese communist agent who had a tawdry affair with Vince
Foster and then killed him using the lead pipe on the grassy knoll.  These same bastards happily
call anti-war veterans "cowardly" for merely having a lick of goddam
experience and sense, not to mention the occasional three limbs blown
off, and they now try to imply Obama might have been on the wrong side
of 9-11.  They’d frame Bill Clinton for the Fatty Arbuckle case if they
could.  In their minds, Hillary is part Black Panther, part castrating
mama figure, Tanya from the SLA in a Brooks Brothers catsuit, an evil
so frightening that no lie can be greater.

It must suck to be Hillary sometimes.  I get that.

But here’s what sucks worse: the Iraq war is one of the deadliest, stupidest, and
most criminal foreign policy mistakes of our lifetimes.  (Just making
that list is a major accomplishment, btw, considering Guatemala, East
Timor, Cambodia, etc.)  And Hillary, despite her recent weaseling —
sorry, triangulation is the term of art — vigorously supported Bush’s Iraq adventure from the start.

In the wake of 9-11, it wasn’t just George W. Bush telling the world "every nation has to be either with us or against us."  It was Hillary, as you can hear for yourself.

In October 2002, during the debate about giving Bush authorization to
invade Iraq, it wasn’t just Dick Cheney telling the world in that
Saddam Hussein had links to Al-Qaeda.  It was Hillary, from the floor of Congress.

And in February 2005, it wasn’t just John McCain claiming that
democracy was taking root in Iraq, and that the insurgency was in its
last throes.  It was Hillary, standing right at John McCain’s side.

Yeah.  So President Hillary would be soooooo much better about Iraq.  Clap louder, everybody.  Make it come true.

If this were a just world, not one person who authorized Bush to invade
Iraq would ever be re-elected to anything, and the prime engineers of
this mess would be going to jail instead of Fox News desks.  And if
this were a just world, Hillary would be held in almost as much
contempt by people opposed to this war as Bush, Cheney, and the rest of
Team Chimpy.

Maybe a lot of people who supported the war early and then
turned against it will identify with her more strongly than with people
who were right in the first place.  So I dunno.  Maybe I’m wrong.

I can certainly imagine Hillary changing the subject away from Iraq, which she’ll have to as much as possible.  I can picture many Democrats supporting Hillary eventually in
the hold-your-nose, best-we’ve-got, wish-it-wasn’t-her sort of way. 
And with our inherently corrupt campaign finance system in which a big
war chest often buys power, yeah, she might have a shot.  And maybe I’m
a big enough jerk that a year from now you’ll see me holding my nose,
too.

But it seems to me, anyway, that when you’re starting as an active accessory to the bloodsoaked mess that your core constituency now deeply opposes, and when you’re starting with less than half of the electorate not already actively hostile to you in some way…

It’s no wonder that Hillary’s announcement
gives Iraq exactly one sentence, implying opposition but without taking
any position whatsoever.  If you read closely, you’ll notice she
instantly changes the subject to liberal-sounding blah about health
care, conservation, and Social Security (while falsely adopting the
right-wing talking point that Social Security is in financial trouble,
incidentally) — but all cleverly framed as open questions, so she
doesn’t have to take any position right now.

I don’t really blame her for that.

I mean, we can all see just how wise Hillary Clinton is when she decides to take a clear stand.