I love behind the scene reports on the happenings within the campaigns and Dana Milbank's chronicle of the Clinton campaign yesterday doesn't disappoint.
Throughout the article he hilariously invokes the dead parrot skit from Monty Python to exemplify the reality that is facing Clinton. That whether she knows it or not, her campaign for the White House is over.
Customer: "Look, matey, I know a dead parrot when I see one, and I'm looking at one right now."
Pet-shop owner: "No, no he's not dead, he's -- he's resting! Remarkable bird, the Norwegian blue, isn't it, aye? Beautiful plumage!"
-- From "Monty Python's Flying Circus"
Milbank begins the account with the Clinton campaign leaving the hotel in Foggy Bottom on their way to West Virginia to bask in Hillary's big victory.
There are two press buses waiting at the hotel here for Clinton's trip to her victory rally in West Virginia, but the entire press contingent doesn't quite fill one. It isn't until the entourage arrives at Dulles Airport that Clinton aides learn that the second bus is still idling, empty, at the hotel.
After the campaign's plane lands in Charleston, West Virginia, Hillary greets a crowd of non-existent supporters.
After an appropriate wait, she steps from the plane and pretends to wave to a crowd of supporters; in fact, she is waving to 10 photographers underneath the airplane's wing. She pretends to spot an old friend in the crowd, points and gives another wave; in fact, she is waving at an aide she had been talking with on the plane minutes earlier.
The article continues with the campaign's arrival at the Charleston Convention Center where only 89 supporters arrived in time for the announcement that Clinton was declared the winner of West Virginia.
Milbank's account perfectly demonstrates the stark contrast between what is really going on in the campaign and the puffed up false enthusiasm Clinton and her surrogates are offering up on our television. The whole article is worth a read.