Could Hillary Bequeath Us Our Long-Awaited Third Party?

Oh boy. Where have I seen this movie before?

I think it was four years, surprisingly enough. Hey, what a coincidence! Wasn't there a presidential election going on back then, too?

Remember how Howard Dean came out of near total obscurity, how he started walloping the presumptive front-runner, John "Fearless" Kerry, by taking bold positions (at least in the context of American politics) against the war, and against George W. Bush? Remember how Kerry changed his tune to ape Dean's message, and how nervous Democratic voters played it safe and came home to the guy with the experience and the name brand? Remember what an outstandingly effective candidate he then turned out to be? Remember the "real deal"? (Oh, and what a deal it was. I think experienced card players refer to that hand as a 'jack-shit straight, seven high', if I'm not mistaken.)

Is this ringing any bells for anyone?

Only Democrats could lose the White House in 2008. It's hard to imagine a more perfect storm favoring their decisive, landslide victory. This should be 1932 redux, and then some. There's a reviled incumbent from the opposite party, already past his expiration date four years ago when he stole a second election. There's a new nominee from that same party joined to him at the hip on the most important issues, and stupid enough to be seen as such publically. There's the economy heading into a recession after years of lethargy for the middle class. An extremely unpopular war based on lies. A massive national debt. A housing crisis. An environmental crisis. Gas at well over three bucks a gallon. Oil over $100 a barrel. The dollar at record lows and plummeting. Pension stocks falling and cities falling apart - when they're not literally drowning. Scandals everywhere in the Republican Party. Three-fourths of the country believing America to be on the wrong track. And more. Put it all together and it's an amazing scenario! It's like some poli sci professor somewhere was tinkering around with a real-life statistical model, setting all the variables at max to see how big a blow-out is theoretically possible. "Hey, I wonder what happens if…?"

It's a perfect, perfect storm. And then along came Hillary. Look, I certainly don't object to her running if she wants to. But I do object to how she's running, and I think Democratic voters are as dumb as a bag of hammers sitting out in the rain to pull the handle for her. In this year of the great political tsunami, Republicans have managed to - inadvertently, it would seem - choose their best hope to hold on to the presidency, even if they can't quite stand their own choice. Hillary would be the Democrats' worst hope.

She would go into the general election with all sorts of pre-existing baggage and negatives. She would get smashed to pieces by McCain on the very voter selection criteria she herself has articulated for use against Obama: experience and national security. McCain could virtually take her 3:00 a.m. ad, pull her out and drop himself in, and use it against her. And he will. Her candidacy is already ugly to contemplate, and she hasn't even released her tax filings yet. Aren't Democrats just brilliant? Hey, maybe she can get Kerry to be her running mate! Perhaps Bob Shrum is free these days, and can finally push himself into double digits on his personal best lifetime count of presidential races lost (with zero wins), by managing the campaign.

But it's not just Democrats going with the Clintons that alarms me, it's how they might win it. It is almost a mathematical certainty that neither candidate can win the nomination by means of gathering pledged delegates in the months ahead. Under the proportional allocation system Democratic primaries and caucuses tend to use, a candidate has to do exceedingly well in the popular vote to realize a significant shift in delegates. It would appear that Clinton's got some favorable states ahead, and that Obama has as many or perhaps more, unless momentum has really shifted now, after Tuesday. I tend to doubt that is the case, unless Obama goes all Massachusetts at this point, like Kerry and Dukakis, and stands by helplessly watching the steamroller as it relentlessly approaches. In which case, fine, anyhow - get the clown off the stage, he's not ready for prime-time. As a tired American progressive, worn down by disappointment across more decades of losing politics than I care to count, I can abide many things. But one of them is not another wimpy Democratic presidential nominee who gets out-slugged by the latest Karl Rove and manages yet again to seize defeat from the jaws of victory.