Hillary Owes Rush and Sean

It was desperate this morning west of the Dry Dock and south of Superior. No coffee! A few beans of de-caf were not going to make it happen, and the likelihood that I was soon going to be stripping off my clothes, painting my warrior-like body barn red with linseed oil and go shrieking off through the woods was pretty damned high until … way back in a corner of the cupboard I found what had to have been a 10 year-old jar of “instant cappuccino” powder … that had hardened to the consistency of lava.

Apply boiling water. Good enough. What’s on the tube? Oh look, another debate forum. This time the Democrats down at Drake, with George Stephanopoulos doing the moderating.

I can see why Barack Obama says he’s drawing a line at any more of these things. As much as I get a kick out of Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel (and Bill Richardson and Chris Dodd and Joe Biden) firing off a few good, “What have I got to lose?” lines, they ain’t going to happen, and it really is time to start moving on. (Remember, this nomination thing is going to be wrapped up by mid-February, at least for the Democrats.)

While I remain an Edwards guy, the Hillary supremacy is truly something to behold. How and why is she so far ahead of everyone else? Didn’t we all think she had impossibly high “negatives”? I mean, there was Karl Rove on The Rush Limbaugh Show, reminding us of exactly that just a couple days ago.

Of course, as Clinton joked this morning, how could she NOT have high negatives after what has been going on in this country for the last 20 years? Twenty years is just about exactly as long as both the Clintons and Limbaugh have been on the national stage.

There is a great irony underlying Hillary’s current and apparently solid and growing popularity, and it ain’t just old-style party hacks taking fat checks from Big Pharma. As much as anything else it is that Hillary Clinton isn’t now and most likely never has been anything close to the shrewish, ball-busting harridan that Limbaugh, Hannity, Hewitt, Savage, Medved, O’Reilly, Ingraham, Liddy, yadda yadda and yadda yadda some more have always portrayed her. Not even close.

Their bullshit earned them good ratings for nearly two decades. But it may be coming back to bite them.

As Hillary makes the usual campaign appearances and does this relentless debate/forum shtick, we are finding that the caricature of her created by the “vast right-wing conspiracy” has had the effect of setting her bar for likeability so low it comes as a startling surprise to almost everyone — especially those who haven’t paid a lot of attention to her beyond what they hear on the radio — that she is invariably gracious, in addition to being composed and well-versed in the machinery of both politics and diplomacy. It is a variation on the low expectation game. After 15 solid years of nothing but “Hillary the Bitch,” the Hillary the average voter is seeing bears no resemblance … whatsoever.

I think Edwards still has it right about how to re-set the rules of the game for the American dream, (although, come on John, tell us how you expect to LEGISLATE billions of dollars of profits out of the hands of the HMOs?), but if this thing stays on the track it is on, and Hillary and Bubba return to the White House, they might consider sending Rush and Sean and all their sycophants thank you cards.