Good Thing Frank Rich Doesn't Work For MSNBC!

For, if he did, after the thrashing Rich delivered on Hillary today, and with they way they handled the David Shuster dust-up, the NBC/MSNBC empty suits would probably roll out their entire prime time line-up to apologize to her.

Rich was mercy-less in his column ("Next Up for the Democrats: Civil War"), tearing apart Hillary's live Hallmark Channel, Wolf Blizter-Situation Room-spoof, Town Meeting ("anachronistic studio set that looked like a deliberate throwback to the good old days of 1992").

"Like the scripted “Ask President Bush” sessions during the 2004 campaign, this town hall seemed to unfold in Stepford. The anodyne questions (“What else would you do to help take care of our veterans?”) merely cued up laundry lists of talking points. Some in attendance appeared to trance out ..."

"However boring, this show was a dramatic encapsulation of how a once-invincible candidate ended up in a dead heat, crippled by poll-tested corporate packaging that markets her as a synthetic product leeched of most human qualities. What’s more, it offered a naked preview of how nastily the Clintons will fight, whatever the collateral damage to the Democratic Party, in the endgame to come..."

"Less than two weeks ago she was airlifted into her own, less effective version of “Mission Accomplished.” Instead of declaring faux victory in Iraq, she starred in a made-for-television rally declaring faux victory in a Florida primary that was held in defiance of party rules, involved no campaigning and awarded no delegates. As Andrea Mitchell of NBC News said, it was “the Potemkin village of victory celebrations.”

It could be, since there's been no wailing out in the blogosphere, on how Rich, essentially, called Hillary and her husband lying scumbags, blinded only by their own, self-centered ambitions, the Hillary & Co. didn't notice, or have a chance to exploit/read Rich today.

They were kind of busy.

First, throwing their campaign manager under-the-bus, soon followed by her fourth consecutive defeat, in less than 24-hours, to Barack Obama, Obama taking the State of Maine's caucus today.

Rich points out, both with Hillary's Hallmark Moment, and out on the campaign trail, the Clinton's exploitation of "race" ("The campaign’s other most potent form of currency remains its thick deck of race cards."), the opportunity of some classic Clinton ruthlessness that lies ahead ("The question now is how much more racial friction the Clinton campaign will gin up if its Hispanic support starts to erode in Texas, whose March 4 vote it sees as its latest firewall.").

And then there's the delegates.

To borrow from Joe Pesci, it's the delegates, it's always the fucking delegates.

"That’s why you now hear Clinton operatives talk ever more brazenly about trying to reverse party rulings so that they can hijack 366 ghost delegates from Florida and the other rogue primary, Michigan, where Mr. Obama wasn’t even on the ballot. So much for Mrs. Clinton’s assurance on New Hampshire Public Radio last fall that it didn’t matter if she alone kept her name on the Michigan ballot because the vote “is not going to count for anything.”

Let us remind Barack Obama, the advice we gave him - and John Edwards - last month, on what he is up against;

"That someone needs to say again - and really accentuate - that he is running against THE CLINTONS!

Hunter S. Thompson, in his laser beam, spot-on "Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail", about his view of the 1972 Presidential elections described the ego of a man running for president to that of "a moose in heat".

Well, there's two moose out there, ramming their antlers against anybody and anything that looks to be in their way on calling 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue home again."

Read Frank Rich and "Next Up for the Democrats: Civil War" ... It is such a exquisitely delicious thrashing!


Bonus Clinton Dirt

Barry Crimmins weighs in, less on David Shuster and much, much more on Chelsea Clinton with his "Hedging for a Hoedown" (and it's worth clicking over for the Rush Limbaugh photo only)

Arianna Huffington has some background on Hillary's, suddenly old-new, campaign manager with her blast-from-the-past "Who Is Maggie Williams?"


"Don't listen to that woman behind the curtain"