The Forgotten Nominee

Remember Hillary Rodham Clinton?  The woman who, mark my words, WILL be the next president of the United States?  How is it possible that she has become more invisible than Barack Hussein Obama's secular piety?

Not everybody has forgotten about the Empress, though.  Karl "The Architect" Rove, though still succumbing to the conventional un-wisdom of the "inevitability" that BO lifted from the Empress, marvels at False Messiah's inability to "put her away":

“I think what [Obama] saw in Oregon was the rumor that the polls were closing, and that‘s why he spent most of last weekend in Oregon rather than going on the offensive and trying to take away something in Kentucky,” Rove says.

“It’s like, he only gets 30% of the vote in Kentucky, but feels compelled to go to Oregon. And even then, in that state, which is full of granola eaters and Birkenstock wearers, he gets 58% of the vote, and she gets 42%.”

Rove added, “The problems that Barack Obama has with working class voters are real, and they’re not going away. It’s cultural. They view him as an elitist — as somebody who’s condescending and doesn’t share their values.”

Also, in Rove’s opinion, “Obama should not have gone to Iowa last night and said, ‘I’ve got a majority of the elected delegates.’ Let somebody else do that. He should have focused on substance, not try to say, ‘[look at me], I’m ahead.’”

Very astute observations, but not as astute as they could have been had Rove not joined the "Obama has already won" crowd.

What I glean from them is that Our Mr. Hussein is less than confident about his supposed "driver seat" status for the Democrat nomination.  Indeed, it appears to verge on at least low-level panic.  Think about it: he was going to get his doors blown off in Kentucky just as in West Virginia last week, just as he was going to return the favor in Oregon just as he did in North Carolina.  The superduperdelegates are supposedly trending his direction.  Everybody (except yours truly) has already conceded the nomination to him.  He's as many as ten points up on Darth Queeg in the general election polls.   So what does he have to be anxious about?  Why does he need to try and reassure his followers, and more pointedly and seemingly, himself, that he's "still ahead" in the primary race?

One reason would be his inexperience.  Not having been through a bona fide major league campaign before, much less on the national level, he lacks the assurance and groundedness one needs to be able to ride out rough patches and keep one's focus on the big picture.  To "stay on message" and not become reflexively re-active, which can be a death knell for a candidacy if it becomes habitual.  One could apply this to the notion that he's looking ahead to November and the disadvantages he wants to avoid against John Sith McCain.

But that notion just doesn't ring true to me.  I reiterate: if the Democratic race is "over," what does it matter of Obama gets drilled in Kentucky and doesn't win Oregon by as much as he would have preferred?  Logically he should already have moved on and be focusing entirely on Maverick by now.  That he clearly has not tells me that Team Hussein still thinks the Donk nomination is in play, and that Mrs. Clinton's prohibitive advantage with white/rural/working class voters - ironically i.e., the "Reagan Democrats" - while still remaining a card-carrying granola-eating Birkenstock wearer herself can still influence superduperdelegates to switch back to her based upon the electability factor.  Which, of course, is the raison d'etere of superduperdelegates in the first place.

Ba-ROCK, in other words, knows it's not "over."  All the less so if the Michigan and Florida delegations are seated, which would cut his overall delegate lead down to fifty-five, by Rove's estimate, and give Her Nib the overall primary popular vote lead, and thus another argument to the SDDs.

She knows what's at stake - and is sparing no demogoguery to drive the point home:

Hillary Clinton compared her effort to seat Florida and Michigan delegates to epic American struggles, including those to free the slaves and win the right to vote for blacks and women…

“In Florida, you learned the hard way what happens when your votes aren’t counted and the candidate with fewer votes is declared the winner,” she said. “The lesson of 2000 here in Florida is crystal clear: if any votes aren’t count, the will of the people isn’t realized and our democracy is diminished.”

Actually, Bush got more of the only votes that mattered - Electoral Votes.  And he got, officially, 537 more votes in Florida.  It's been documented six ways from Sunday.  Mrs. Clinton knows this as well.

But she also knows her audience, and that tapping the Florida 2K rage to her benefit is a powerful psychological tool.  Ditto equating the salvaging of her candidacy to the epic social struggles of the past century and a half.  It's classic Clintonoid overwrought narcissism, but if there's anything about La Clinton Nostra that should be unforgettable, it is their audacity.  It's the essence of their (almost) unbroken string of electoral success over the years, and I see no reason why it won't triumph this time as well.

His Eminence has good reason to be skittish until that nomination is locked in his personal safe and the entire Clinton Machine is locked up in a holding cell after being strip-searched for listening and communications devices.  Until the "Hopeandchange Express" rolls into the Pepsi Center in August, he can count on precisely nothing.