After Thursday evening's conciliatory ending to the debate between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, I believed that it was a prelude to the junior senator from New York recognizing the reality of the race - namely, that it will be exceedingly difficult for her to win the presidential nomination.
Then came this:
"I have to express my deep disappointment that he is continuing to send false and discredited mailings," Clinton said at a press conference after a speech here, holding the mailings in her hand as she railed against them. "He says one things in his speeches and then he turns around does this. It is not the new politics the speeches are about. It is not hopeful. It is destructive."
She added: "Shame on you, Barack Obama. It is time you ran a campaign consistent with your messages in public. That's not what I expect from you. Meet me in Ohio -- let's have a debate about your tactics."
"Enough about the speeches, and the big rallies, and then using tactics right out of Karl Rove's playbook," she said angrily. "This is wrong and every Democrat should be outraged."
No, Hillary. Shame on you.
Shame on her for equating a fellow Democrat's tactics to those of Karl Rove. Karl Rove would spin lies to the media and turn them into conventional wisdom. The mailers from Obama's campaign may not highlight Clinton in the best light, but there's nothing false about them. It's quite well-documented that Hillary Clinton was supportive of NAFTA before she was against it (sound familiar?). In addition, Clinton's mandated health care plan will result in punitive penalties assessed against families if they aren't able to afford payments for their health care plan. That's not disputed. And frankly, if one institutes a mandate that doesn't have any penalties, it's not a mandate at all.
Instead, Hillary Clinton herself - not her strategists or her surrogates, but the candidate herself - chooses to step up to a public microphone and lash out, in a somewhat unhinged fashion, at Obama. If she were to discuss the substance of the issues, that would be something different. But that would be too difficult to do, because the mailers are factually accurate.
But she didn't. Instead, she chose to go the whole nine yards and accuse the Obama campaign of using Karl Rove-style Republican tactics. Aside from being an outright lie, it also removes any of the goodwill that would be needed to unify the Democratic Party once the nominee is decided. To any observer of the primary process, it's almost certain that Barack Obama is going to receive the most pledged delegate votes (and possibly superdelegates, where he is rapidly narrowing Clinton's lead). With this latest salvo, Hillary Clinton seems determined to go down in defeat ungraciously and angrily. These negative attacks failed badly in Wisconsin, and one would think that the Clinton campaign would recognize that there is no gain to her candidacy - or to the party - of furthering these negative attacks.
During Thursday night's debate, it seemed that Hillary Clinton had learned that lesson firsthand. After being booed for her canned 'change you can Xerox' line, she ended the debate on a positive note.
Today, it becomes apparent that she didn't learn anything at all.
Shame on you, Senator Clinton.