Hillary's Hangover

Do you get the sense that Hillary Clinton wants to have it both ways? When it comes to fighting Republicans, she often claims to be a hardened veteran of GOP attacks, touting her experience with the "vast right wing conspiracy" as evidence that she is the best prepared Democrat to win the presidency. But after Tuesday's woeful debate performance, Mrs. Clinton and her staff are painting a different picture of Hillary. Now, she is portrayed as the victim of a "pile-on." From today's Washington Post:

After a rare night of fumbles by Sen. Hillary Clinton, her rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination rushed to maximize the damage yesterday, even as her advisers argued that the "piling on" engaged in by an all-male field of opponents will ultimately drive more female voters into her camp.

So, on the one hand, she'll proudly claim Karl Rove is "obsessed" with her, and taunt the GOP to bring everything they've got. On the other, those awful bullying men of the Democratic party should be ashamed of themselves. Yes, evidently there's also a vast left wing male conspiracy (and yes, I am familiar with the concept of the patriarchy).

To bring the point home, Clinton's campaign has just released a video titled, "The Politics of the Pile On." While it's a slick bit of editing, and her point is taken that when you're the front-runner your opponents are going to spend more time going after you more than, say, Mike Gravel, there's something utterly disingenuous about the ad. Clearly, it's an attempt by the Clinton camp to distract us from the fact that Hillary had her first lousy performance, and is not, whatever some may claim, inevitable.