Bill Clinton directly accuses the Obama campaign of hostility to working class voters. When you see the brutal politics the Clintons are still eagerly deploying, you have to believe this will go to the convention. The Clintons are prepared to use any argument, any Republican tactic, and any social or cultural division to stay in the game. By tactically morphing into Rove Republicans, they are deliberately pivoting off a myth about Obama to make him unelectable. I think the idea that they will withdraw when Obama reaches the actual number of delegates required for the nomination is a myth. They will insist on having their say at the convention and changing the votes of pledged delegates if they need to. This is their party, in their minds. Obama has no right to lead it. Until he waits his turn and the Clintons give their blessing.
To stay in the game, the level and suicidal quality of their attacks on Obama require a similar form of tactic in response. But Obama will not and should not go there. The one profound difference between him and the Clintons is that he will actually not do some things for the sake of power. God knows the Clontons have brought him to the verge of that - but pure cynicism would rebut his core message and destroy his candidacy as surely as the Clintons are trying to do. And to say what needs to be said about the Clintons - the truth about their character and their shared pathologies - would be a horribly divisive and brutal move. It would render the Clintons even more unelectable than they already are, undermine the Obama message and give the White House to the GOP. What's striking to me about this race is that it is the young insurgent who is still acting as the responsible party elder; and the former president who is behaving like a man who will destroy his own party in order to soothe his own sense of entitlement and ego.
After this presidency, after eight years of war and debt and torture and deceit and cynicism, to see the Democratic party self-destruct is really something. They were given a chance to remake the country and regain their soul; and the Clintons could not bear it if they were not the vehicles for such a shift. I don't believe anyone in the Democratic party can or will stop them. This is a kamikaze mission.
(Photo: Ethan Miller/Getty.)