Hillary's Greek drama

Hillary Clinton told supporters at a California fundraiser last week that she's not ruling out placing her name in nomination at the Democratic convention. It would be "a catharsis" for her supporters to "yell and scream and have their opportunity," she explained, "It's as old as, you know, as Greek drama."

Actually, it looks more like a Hollywood drama. It looks like Gone With the Wind.

It looks like the scene when Ashley Wilkes comes home from the war and Scarlett tries to follow Melanie down the road to throw her arms around him, only to be restrained by Mammy with the words, "He's her husband, honey."

But Hillary Clinton's lifelong dream of finding love in the arms of the Democratic convention is not going away.

Tonight the web sites of Time magazine and ABC News featured stories about Senator Clinton's bizarre bargaining for her delegates to be "respected" at the Democratic National Convention in Denver later this month.

Instead of congratulating Barack Obama and unconditionally supporting him, Senator Clinton is reportedly negotiating, demanding, maneuvering, and threatening to steal the rosy spotlight from the Democratic nominee for president during the priceless televised hours of the national convention.

Of course, she claims this is all driven by the intense feelings of her supporters, but that sounds a lot like the game show host who says "We've gotten cards and letters from viewers..." to explain changes in the show that were ordered by the network.

We can think of three reasons that Hillary Clinton is doing this destructive, self-absorbed tango on Barack Obama's dance floor.

Our first and best guess (see "Why Hillary won't go") is that she illegally spent the money she raised for the general election during the primary campaign, off the books. If that's the case, and she filed false reports with the FEC, she will be in serious trouble if she doesn't come up with nearly $23 million by August 28, when she's obligated to refund that money to donors who do not consent to transfer their contributions to her 2012 Senate campaign account.

Our second guess is that she is unable to accept that she's no longer the big cheese in charge of the Democratic party machinery. Since 1992, when her husband locked up the nomination for president, Hillary Clinton has been in a position to reward her friends and hurt her enemies through the money, jobs and mailing lists controlled by the Democratic National Committee. Now, of course, those goodies are Barack Obama's to hand out.

Our third guess is that she's loopier than a Slinky.

If she makes her entrance at the convention from the top of a staircase, watch for that.



Copyright 2008

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