Saturday, May 31, 2008

Bill Clinton's latest attempt to destroy his legacy (updated with additional link)

And, y'know, it's not like he didn't do his best to do that when he was president, is it (I suppose it depends on what the meaning of "is it" is...)?

With Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign on the verge of defeat, Bill Clinton has been placing blame on enemies including a brazenly biased media that tried to suppress blue-collar votes, a powerful anti-war group that endorsed rival Barack Obama and weak-willed party leaders unable to stand up to either of these nefarious forces.

Pieced together from the former president's public remarks at his wife's campaign events and a private conversation last week with top donors to her campaign, the theory goes something like this: After Hillary recovered from a string of losses to rival Barack Obama with March 4 wins in Texas and Ohio, powerful forces conspired to pressure the superdelegates who will decide the nomination to back Obama by discouraging her supporters from voting and trying to hide evidence proving she would fare better than Obama against presumptive GOP nominee John McCain


Mr. President, Senator Clinton. May I respectfully add two two more personages to blame for the fact that Mrs. Clinton has lost? Yourselves. That's why you lost.

(UPDATE: Or, what hilzoy said:
Note what's missing here: any sense that Clinton herself is a responsible moral agent. People are writing about her as though she were a bomb that needed to be expertly defused, as opposed to a person who can govern her own life, and is responsible for her own choices.


Obama is a better candidate than Hillary (and Bill, as I've said before, should have been boarded at the Playboy mansion so he couldn't embarass his wife's campaign so much). Everything else is just smoke.

I fear this long primary has allowed both Bill and Hillary to show their true colors. I, and I don't think I'm alone here, don't like what I see.

Bill Clinton was the first US president for whom I ever voted, and I remember feeling hope at the time. Now I just feel like I'm carsick ("Clintsick?").

For god's sake, the two of you, if you love your country at all, Just. Go. Away!

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