Hal O'Brien

One of the truly mystifying responses of those supporting Senator Clinton, in the wake of her concession, has been the assertion that Clinton's loss means it is not possible for a woman to become President. This post by Erica Jong at The Huffington Post is typical: "(L)osing my last chance to see a woman in the White House feels like shit."

Ms. Jong is, per Wikipedia, 66 years old. The Census Bureau says (NOTE: .PDF Adobe acrobat file at link), that a white woman of 65 had an average life expectancy of 20 years in 2004. That would kick us out to 2028, or five more Presidential election cycles from now.

Meanwhile, back in 2006, the White House Project identified "8 for '08" -- that is, 8 women who they believed could be considered seriously for President. (Yes, Senator Clinton was among them.) They were 4 Democrats, and 4 Republicans. It's a list that looks reasonable to me:

Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY)
Senator Susan Collins (R-ME)
Mayor Shirley Franklin (D-Atlanta)
Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX)
Governor Janet Napolitano (D-AZ)
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (R)
Governor Kathleen Sebelius (D-KS)
Senator Olympia Snowe (R-ME)

It should be noted Governor Sebelius is being mentioned as a Vice Presidential possibility for Senator Obama, which means by definition she's also a Presidential possibility.

Fascinating comment on Kevin Drum's blog:

"The whole Hillary campaign just reminds me a certain type of chess player. When they are overmatched and lose a major piece, like their Queen, they keep playing on and on and on in a slow death march that ends with their being checkmated. Even though the outcome is never in doubt, they keep on, with the hope that their opponent will accidently leave their Queen exposed or even worse, their King.

I used to hate those types of players. Still do."

Frank Rich at the New York Times has a great piece up, which goes over a raft of similarities between Senator Clinton's campaign and the way the Iraq war has been waged. I've mentioned the similarities in character flaws between Bush and Clinton before -- Rich is going after tactical stuff. And it's too goo to not quote at length here (though by no means the whole article -- go, read):

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"The Audacity of Hopelessness"
By FRANK RICH
Published: February 24, 2008


WHEN people one day look back at the remarkable implosion of the Hillary Clinton campaign, they may notice that it both began and ended in the long dark shadow of Iraq.

It’s not just that her candidacy’s central premise — the priceless value of “experience” — was fatally poisoned from the start by her still ill-explained vote to authorize the fiasco. Senator Clinton then compounded that 2002 misjudgment by pursuing a 2008 campaign strategy that uncannily mimicked the disastrous Bush Iraq war plan. After promising a cakewalk to the nomination — “It will be me,” Mrs. Clinton told Katie Couric in November — she was routed by an insurgency.

The Clinton camp was certain that its moneyed arsenal of political shock-and-awe would take out Barack Hussein Obama in a flash. The race would “be over by Feb. 5,” Mrs. Clinton assured George Stephanopoulos just before New Year’s. But once the Obama forces outwitted her, leaving her mission unaccomplished on Super Tuesday, there was no contingency plan. She had neither the boots on the ground nor the money to recoup.

That’s why she has been losing battle after battle by double digits in every corner of the country ever since. And no matter how much bad stuff happened, she kept to the Bush playbook, stubbornly clinging to her own Rumsfeld, her chief strategist, Mark Penn. Like his prototype, Mr. Penn is bigger on loyalty and arrogance than strategic brilliance.

{...}

Clinton fans don’t see their standard-bearer’s troubles this way. In their view, their highly substantive candidate was unfairly undone by a lightweight showboat who got a free ride from an often misogynist press and from naïve young people who lap up messianic language as if it were Jim Jones’s Kool-Aid. Or as Mrs. Clinton frames it, Senator Obama is all about empty words while she is all about action and hard work.

But it’s the Clinton strategists, not the Obama voters, who drank the Kool-Aid. The Obama campaign is not a vaporous cult; it’s a lean and mean political machine that gets the job done. The Clinton camp has been the slacker in this race, more words than action, and its candidate’s message, for all its purported high-mindedness, was and is self-immolating.

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Like I say -- read the whole thing.

Here's a round-up of various estimates of the delegate count in the Democratic party.

The short answer: No one agrees.

Somewhat longer answer: If just you do "pledged delegates," then it's pretty much a tie between Obama and Clinton(s). If you count in the "super-delegates" -- generally currently elected officials and the part establishment -- it edges over to Hillary.

Of note: Edwards has 61 delegates, and his campaign, like Dean's last cycle, is only "suspended."

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Surprise of Super Tuesday coverage: Hearing Scott Simon interview Senator Barbara Boxer of California -- a super-delegate, natch -- and he didn't mention just how close Boxer and Clinton are. As in, Hillary's brother, Tony Rodham, married Boxer's daughter, Nicole, in a ceremony held at the White House in 1994. (Per Wikipedia, the couple divorced in 2000.)

Timothy Noah at Slate has noticed that perhaps Ms. Clinton's claim of "experience" ain't what it's cracked up to be.

The New York Times has an interesting article today about a cache of letters between two old Chicago high school friends.

He was John Peavoy, who went on to become an English professor at Scripps (hey, zellandyne... anyone you know?)

She was Hillary Rodham.

The Times duly notes there are few spelling or grammar errors, but this one caught my eye (although it's perfectly explicable -- she heard the word rather than saw it):

"She reports in one letter from October of her sophomore year that she spent a “miserable weekend” arguing with a friend who believed that “acid is the way and what did I have against expanding my conscience.”"

I like the possibility held out here of "conscience-ness enhancing drugs," though... Perhaps we could give Bush's cabinet a megadose each.