The senior HRC aides [...] –well, “loyal” is not how I would describe them. Their candidate still has a 30% chance of winning, and they are diminishing that chance by dishing “campaign in turmoil” dirt to reporters in the hope that it will get a knife stuck in the back of one of their competitors for future White House jobs and in the hope of gaining reporter points that they can use in some way at some future date.
I’ve seen this before. There are two kinds of people who get involved in politics–those who care about the substance of policy, and those who want to get White House Mess privileges, or as a consolation prize become media celebrities. The first kind–the policy people–will be loyal to a politician as long as he or she is trying his or her best to achieve the shared policy goals. The second kind–the spinmasters–will be loyal to a politician as long as he or she is a winner who favors them. If a politician stops looking like a winner, or if a politician starts favoring others for what they hoped would be their west wing job, they will jump ship as fast as they can–and you will start seeing the “infighting” stories.
See also. Not pretty. I’m not Hillary’s number one fan, but I’m sure she’d be a perfectly adequate President. Secretly, I’ve always believed – and I have absolutely zero evidence to back this up, of course – that deep down Hillary has a strategic reserve of white-hot hatred for Republicans and all their works and pomps, and once elected, she would finally be free to shed the go-along-get-along act and take hilarious, schadenfreudious revenge, which would be horrible and undemocratic and everything, but also be just desserts, and so kind of awesome. Ah, well, not to be. And it would be too bad if her campaign should fail because of this careerist crap, but better now than in the general election.
February 25, 2008 at 7:15 pm
You know, anyone who would allow their campaign to fail because of careerist crap is not who we want running the country. Imagine this bunch in the White House and the constant grist they would provide to the rightwing mouth-breathers. Things have gone so far south that no one will be able to fix them in 8 short years…but a team more interested in planting knives in each other’s backs, thereby feeding the rightwing a constant supply of red meat would get nothing at all accomplished.
Hillary’s campaign failed because they ran the ultimate insider campaign: raise and spend a lot of money, spin, and win. You know they have contacts out in the states with their ears to the ground – every campaign and every consultant does – and certainly some of those contacts alerted them to the organization Obama was building. But because they’ve been inside for so long and are so used to running campaigns from the same template, they just assumed that a campaign can’t be won that way. Hillary’s derisive talk now about inspiring rhetoric is just another note in the same cynical theme.
February 25, 2008 at 7:55 pm
Dude, does that sound like Hillary?
After Bill wasn’t convicted, they could have done anything and gotten away with it.
Neither of them did anything then, and they’re surely not going to do it now.
February 25, 2008 at 7:58 pm
It was my secret fantasy, and I loved it.
February 26, 2008 at 10:10 am
It’s a beautiful fantasy, man, it really is.
February 26, 2008 at 10:14 am
Jennifer said:
a team more interested in planting knives in each other’s backs, thereby feeding the rightwing a constant supply of red meat
George Orwell said:
Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
Ralph Waldo Emerson said:
I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.
Dayv said:
[little of lasting value]
February 26, 2008 at 11:29 am
If she really wanted to shiv the Repubs, she could try changing Senate rules to hose them.
February 29, 2008 at 9:19 am
[...] As the Editors noted recently: I’m not Hillary’s number one fan, but I’m sure she’d be a perfectly adequate President. Secretly, I’ve always believed – and I have absolutely zero evidence to back this up, of course – that deep down Hillary has a strategic reserve of white-hot hatred for Republicans and all their works and pomps, and once elected, she would finally be free to shed the go-along-get-along act and take hilarious, schadenfreudious revenge, which would be horrible and undemocratic and everything, but also be just desserts, and so kind of awesome. [...]