How over is it for Hillary?  Well  Dana Milbank's Washington Post column resorts to Monty Python's Parrot Sketch to describe the state of Hillary's campaign

7:30 p.m., South Hall, Charleston Convention Center: the networks declare Clinton the winner of the primary...all of 89 Clinton supporters have arrived so far. ...At the Charleston victory celebration, McAuliffe charges up to the lectern. "Hillary Clinton is in this to the end," he tells the crowd. "She's going to Denver as the nominee!"
...
Customer: "He's not pining! He's passed on! This parrot is no more! He has ceased to be! He's expired and gone to meet his maker! He's a stiff! Bereft of life, he rests in peace! . . . His metabolic processes are now history! He's off the twig! He's kicked the bucket, he's shuffled off his mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleeding choir invisible! This is an ex-parrot!"

Not bad Dana, but I think Python's oevure is replete with even more apt analgoies for the state of  Ms. Clinton's Candidacy

Well, give her credit for tenacity anyway.  Hillary Clinton doggedly continues her 08’ Trailer Park Tour in weather that can only be described as not merely stormy but actually filthy and from all appearances she’s still pretending she’s a viable candidate.   Now that’s either:
1- The worst case of cognitive dissonance seen in the wild since Baghdad Bob had his star turn, or  

2- she’s putting a happy face on a looming disaster.

A story in the Washington Post today,  suddenly makes B a lot more likely option.  It seems the Campaign for all its brave talk about fundraising is in debt-big time- to the tune of $20 million dollars:

Clinton aides..  confirm[ed} that she is $20 million in debt. "The voters are going to decide this," senior adviser Howard Wolfson said on "Fox News Sunday," acknowled[ed} the $20 million figure.

This is not a fun diary to write, not because I'm such a huge Hillary supporter-I'm not.  I've been the Obama for President band wagon since I met him at a Senate fund raiser in 03.  However,  there was a time when I sorta liked, Hillary,  not personally but I did have respect for her intellect, her skill  as a politician, a person, and, more importantly,  her effectiveness a standard bearer of the party..

Now?  Not so much.  I've had an ugly though slowly forming in the back of my mind for about a week now that was crystallized by today's news that Hillary has loaned her campaign 6.4 million in the last few weeks

Friends, it pains me to say this, but Hillary Clinton, once the hope of our party, has become the Democratic version of George W. Bush.

Harsh words, I know. but hear me out:

 Just yesterday, Hillary Clinton joined her fellow conservatives in calling for a repeal of the federal gas tax for the summer:
Yesterday, Hillary said:

Hillary Clinton yesterday criticized Barack Obama for opposing the concept of suspending the gas tax ..a plan both she and John McCain have endorsed.

My opponent, Sen. Obama, opposes giving consumers a break, I understand the American people need some relief."

unfortunately for her,  2000 Senate candidate Hillary Clinton already weighed in on this issue and had some harsh words for its proponents  

She  said :

Clinton, meanwhile, lashed out at [the] plan to repeal 4.3 cents of the gas tax, calling it "a bad deal for New York and a potential bonanza for the oil companies

And 2000 Hillary was just getting warmed up:

Yes, you read that right.  Despite what you may have heard during the campaign, Tony Rezko's corruption trial just created a world of hurt for the Republicans again.  

It seems that  Tony, who once hosted  a BUSH fundraiser at his home,  called in the help of few famous Republicans to try to de-rail the investigation into the corruption for which he's now on trial:

A prosecutor told the judge in the Tony Rezko corruption trial Wednesday that a witness is prepared to testify about efforts by top Republicans to get the Bush White House to fire U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald at a time he was spearheading investigations of Gov. Blagojevich's administration... The key players were Robert Kjellander, a Republican National committeeman from Springfield, and Kjellander's old friend, Karl Rove, who, at the time was a top White House adviser.

You rememeber the almost-forgotten US Attorney scandal?  Yeah that's about to come roaring back thanks to these disclosures:

It's time for Hillary to go.

Yes I know she won,  by ten points even, but there's a King Pyrrhus of Epirus on line one who'd like a word with her about her "victory".

She won, But she won Ugly.  Consider what the New York Times (who ENDORSED Hillary) had to say today:Consider what the New York Times (who ENDORSED Hillary) had to say today

The Pennsylvania campaign, was even meaner, more vacuous, more desperate, and more filled with pandering than the.. contests that preceded it.

...it is demeaning the political process; and it does not work. It is past time for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton to acknowledge that the negativity, for which she is mostly responsible, does nothing but harm to her, her opponent, her party and the 2008 election.

ouch.  

And as Andrew Sullivan points out today since March 18th she's won all her "firewall" states and only managed a net increase of 5 delegates

so she needs to go.  But she doesn't go. so how do we make her go? Like this:

Give her credit, when Hillary does a stereotype she does it all the way.  

You might have thought Hillary was channelling Fred Thompson this weekend, as the True Voice of the Conservative this weekend, what with her  fond reminiscences of her Pappy teachin' her to shoot and all the time she spent in her (non specified) Church. Of course , she might have come across as a tech less than genuine when she hurriedly declared questions about her shootin and prayin' activities "Not relevant" to the campaign when reporters asked for specifics.)

Still, never one to under-pander, Hillary must have been thinking "how else do these plebi-er regular people amuse themselves?"  "Oh right. they Drink themselves blind" and thus:  

I'll probably kick myself for wasting my daily diary this way; but this is simply too fun not to share:  (if not for the pictures, for the deeply unhinged comments of the hillary supporter in the comment section)

Mark Penn's sudden resignation from her campaign,  It appears that another high profile clinton supporter may be jumping ship    or at least it looked that way this weekend:

Now for those of you who DON'T have the Complete set of Clintonista Trading Cards,  the guy grinning broadly in  all those photos is....Former DNC head  and current Clinton Capaign chairman Terry McAuliffe.

Now all of this would be worth no more than a wry chuckle if not for the comment that accompanies the link article....now THAT's Funny:

That Politics makes strange bedfellows is axiomatic and hardly worth noting anymore; but in the following story  Hillary's bedfellow isn't strange but positively twisted, and proves that whatever moral center Hillary may have ever had, she's lost it utterly in her increasingly desperate quest to be the nominee.

strong words, I know, but consider this and draw your own conclusions.  At first it seems innocous enough; an account Hillary taking a meeting with a Pennsylvania newspaper's editorial board and leaving them impressed:

Hillary Clinton walked into a [our] conference room last Tuesday to meet with some of the newspaper's editors and reporters and declared, "It was so counterintuitive, I just thought it would be fun to do."

Unremarkable if theThe newspaper wasn't the Pittsburgh Tribune review and this article wasn't written by, Richard Mellon Scaife

yes THAT Richard Mellon Sciafe, and the name rings no (alarm) bells to you read on,  If it does, you might want to pause here for the sake of your stomach's contents:

If the use of someone else's words is Plagairism  (and, according to the Clinton Camp, a mortal sin even when the Other in question gives you permission), what should we call the use of someone else's life?

We've all chewed over Hillary's "misstatements on her trip to Bosnia. How her memory of the events doesn't quite match up with the story told by the news footage of  the same event

And if that were where it stopped it'd be bad enough, but perhaps survivable, as Hillary said, she was sleep deprived at the time (answering too many 3am phone calls perhaps-)she said it and she might have gotten this trip confused with another one.

But confused with a trip that somebody else took?

Houston, She has a Problem.

See,  the daring Sniper-dodging landing into Bosnia, actually happened-but to Senator Olympia Snowe, 6 months earlier

Tell me if this sounds familiar:

Talk About Bringin' the Snark Bringing the Noise!

 My friends, in this world, there is Snarky, there is Snarkier,  and then there is a level of hip, funny, sarcasm that can only be described as: "Snark-a-licious". Today we got a rare example of the last, from an oridnarily staid and buttoned up crew that I just had to share.

Apparently having reached their USDA allowance of BS this week.  The Guys in Obama's communications department got awful damn snarky today and  LAID THE WOOD to the latest laughable spin being peddled by the Clinton camp in the process.  I once thought I had some talent at Snark-fu, but Obama's Boys (and Girls) prove they are the true Jedi Masters of the form

In a move that was both brutal and an utter thing of beauty:  Obama's Campaign re-released the latest Clinton memo with a line by line rebuttal of the contents.   Thier comments had me simultaneously wincing, and laughing out loud.   Let's take a look together shall we?:

After the last debate, Rachel Maddow, commenting on on MSNBC  statement, to the effect that the "fun" part of Democratic nominating race  had ended and the candidates had now started a grim slog to the nomination.

At the time, I was still hugely enjoying the race and wondered what the hell she was talking about.  Now, however,  I see that she was  prophetic.  The heady days of savoring soaring rhetoric and inspiring You Tube videos deciding WHICH universal health care plan would be best for the nation, are gone.   In their place,  has come fretting over theoretical general election  match-up polls, anger over outrageous  campaign tactics and unfair ads; and obsessive counting and recounting of the delegate tallies. Worse yet, hanging over this desperate fight, is the specter of a "stolen"  election, where after all this,  a cabal of un-elected delgates ends up deciding the nomination  

But Yesterday, and idea sparked by a fascinating paragraph in an article in  Washington Post's Style sectiony; suggested a way back to the good old days , and ironically, it involves using the Superdelegates as a force for good not evil:

Following the lead of a certain Nameless candidate for the Democratic let me hereby make a job offer that’s not mine to give but would pretty much solve a whole bunch of problems all at once.   So everybody take a deep breath and repeat after me:

Governor Hillary Clinton. (D-NY)

And yes I’m serious.     This is actually a perfect solution to both the NY scandal and our little nomination contratemps  all in one neat package.

Let’s face facts:  Gov. Elliot "the LOVE Gov." Spitzer is a goner.   Even if he could survive the Scandal and the subsequent charges of hypocrisy, He’ll never again be able to preach fiscal discipline with a straight face ($5,500 an HOUR?!,  for that money he’d better  have been getting a kink-play  with member of a European royal family or an Oscar winner) .  So he’ll be resigning momentarily if he hasn’t already.

And that’s gonna leave a void only a nationally prominent politician with strong NY ties can fill.  One who has experience doing damage control on highly embarrassing personal scandals.

I’m looking at you, Hil.

There is a wide-spread belief fueled by a lazy media that Obama and Hillary are so close on so many issues that policy-wise it really doesn't matter which one gets elected.  But there ARE significant policy differences between them and they DO matter.   For example
In an op-ed that ran in  Sunday's New York Times Author and Law Professor Jeffery Rosen recounts a moment in 2005 when they stood Poles apart on restoring our lost civil liberties.  Obama was for it and Hillary, inexplicably was agin' it

In the Senate, Mr. Obama distinguished himself by making civil liberties one of his legislative priorities. He co-sponsored a bipartisan reform bill that would have cured the worst excesses of the Patriot Act by meaningfully tightening the standards for warrantless surveillance. Once again, he helped encourage a coalition of civil-libertarian liberals and libertarian conservatives. The effort failed when Hillary Clinton joined 13 other Democrats in supporting a Republican motion to cut off debate on amendments to the Patriot Act.

Spinning, is alas, a permanent part of the political landscape these days.  WHAT happens is no longer important, instead the campaigns all try to focus on HOW the media covers it and people at home perceive it.  Campaign strategists today seem to speak the language of  advertising execs and brand managers rather than  precinct captains and ward-heelers.  Now, to be fair, in the world of the 24 hour, always-on news cycle, message control and image awareness are necessary survival skills for a modern candidate. Just ask Dean about a the effect of little unwonted mic feedback.

HOWEVER there is a fine line between "aggressive spin" and "insulting America's intelligence"; the latest missives from team Clinton didn't maerely cross that line but marched over it with a 65 piece marching band, dancing girls, and circus elephants.

It seems Tuesday's Primares are indeed a "must Win"--for Obama:
No Really,  I'm Serious, it's in the title of their latest press memo:

To: Interested Parties
From: The Clinton Campaign
Date: Friday, February 29, 2008
RE: Obama Must-Wins

With their primary picture basically settled, the RNC has the luxury of looking ahead to the general election match-up and apparently they are scared Shitless, at the prospect of running against either of our two candidates.  SO much so that, according to the Poltico , they've even commissioned polls and focus groups to find out how hard they can attack Obama or Hillarywithout looking like racist or sexists pigs  

Top Republican strategists are working on plans to protect the GOP from charges of racism or sexism in the general election, as they prepare for a presidential campaign against the first ever African-American or female Democratic nominee.

The Republican National Committee has commissioned polling and focus groups to determine the boundaries of attacking a minority or female candidate, according to people involved. The secretive effort underscores the enormous risk senior GOP operatives see for a party often criticized for its insensitivity to minorities

Apparently the results of those surveys have the Republicans Scared as hell:

Well, with a headline like that, you can guess which option I choose, I just had a flash of intuition over Hillary's moment of outrage today.

It is clear from reading the multiple thousands of comments here that if its purpose  was to hurt Obama by calling him out on some sort of dirty trick; it failed utterly.  I've seen  the word "unhinged" thrown around here today, as well as a lot of comparisons to the infamous "Dean Scream" incident.

But what if  that WASN'T the point?  What if the real impetus behind this somewhat bizarre moment of political theater was to simply generate buzz, to get the Sunday talk shows to be all about her? (after all, they say there is no bad publicity).  And WHY would she take a risk like that you ask?   Well, my theory is because She's flat broke and she NEEDS the free media to even stay on the air right now.

And while I can't prove this with hard evidence, ladies and gentlemen of the jury let me at least try to build the case with circumstantial evidence:

There is a brilliant  article in Time Magazine onlineabout how the CLinton Campaign  machine is has been spinning so hard it is in danger of stripping its gears;  that contains an absolutely show Stopping quote from Mark Penn:

winning Democratic primaries is not a qualification or a sign of who can win the general election."

He seems to be saying, that the problem with the primary elections is all this damned democracy.  Voters, at least Democrats, are apparently too stupid to be trusted with making decisions like who should be their leader.

For a political "genius" that seems a pretty damned dumb thing to say.  Who was this guy's last client? Julius Ceaser?

Still, this quote is merely the MOST outrageous of a stream of jaw droppers coming from her camp these days.  It seems that during this Fornightus Horriblus for Clinton Campaign; we are also seeing  their true colors bleed through a little more every day