Clinton, Going Down Flailing

I was ready to put this post up to deliver a good elbow to Clinton's side, given some recent talk from her campaign. Then I thought I would take a look at her site to see what she had up there on this last day of the primaries. As I did, I had in mind a post I'd read earlier about how Bill Clinton may still be seeing women on the side, and so I felt bad for her. With that in mind, if she had a realistic, humble front on her website I may have skipped this post.

Alas, she did not. Rather, she appears to have decided to go down flailing. While I still feel sad about the way Bill may be treating her (though it was not clear from what I read), I am nevertheless angry about a particular aspect of her recent politicking: her claim that she has a higher popular vote count than Obama. This is abhorrent to me, given: 1) the duplicitous way she comes up with the count, and 2) the way she is touting that contrived count before Americans, directly egging on the idea that Obama has not been chosen by the people.

First, with the count, she has herself around 200,000 votes in front of Obama. To reach (and yes, she reaches) for that magic (yes, it takes a little) number, she counts Michigan. She generously grants herself 328,309 from Michigan and Obama zero--yes, zero, out of the 238,168 that voted for what appeared with the name "uncommitted" on the ballot. He took his name off the ballot, as did four to five other Democrats in respect for the party rules that Michigan violated. She said Michigan did not count. The rules committee of the Democratic party said it did not count. Read more here. So not only is she manipulating the numbers, but she's throwing it out before voters with ads such as this--aired this week--and doubletalk such as this, on her website.

I'd love if there could be some substantive show of unity from her side, allowing her past lack of integrity (such as this) to be overlooked, but her over-ambition is simply too much to allow for that. This over-ambition is one reason I wrote about not wanting her as vice president and one reason I wrote back in February about how I thought she would be a Democratic devolutionist (she may yet deliver on this if her self-absorbed antics have their way and affect the willingness of voters to support Obama--scratch that, I think she has already affected the willingness of at least some to support Obama). If ever I got into the habit of thinking someone's a-okay because they wear the right party affiliation, she and Bill have throughly cured me of that. What are your thoughts on 'ol Clinton after this mess of a primary season?

Update: Following the final primaries tonight, Hillary kept flailing in her speech, with comments such as the following, which are nothing short of counterproductive in my view: "And I am just enormously grateful, because in the millions of quiet moments, in thousands of places, you asked yourself a simple question: Who will be the strongest candidate and the strongest president? Who will be ready to take back the White House and take charge as Commander-in-Chief and lead our country to better tomorrows? People in all fifty states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the territories, all had a chance to make your voices heard and on Election Day after Election Day, you came out in record numbers to cast your ballots. Nearly eighteen million of you cast your votes for our campaign, carrying the popular vote with more votes than any primary candidate in history. Even when the pundits and the naysayers proclaimed week after week that this race was over, you kept on voting."