Falling from glory...

NPR reported this morning (before going into a fund raising segment) that Obama beat Clinton in the VA, MD, and DC primaries. What caught my attention was the part of the story where they said that for the second time in a row, Clinton had not called Obama to congratulate him or even acknowledged him.

It must be tough for her, I’m sure. All those years of planning and pre-positioning. Suffering through Bill’s foibles. Abandoning Arkansas, where she had lived, worked, and connived (Whitewater) for years; where her husband had been governor, and moving to New York, the big city state. All because she calculated that she could get herself elected to the Senate there based on liberal politics, gender, and hip-ness. Spending all those years in the Senate carefully building her resume by adding “experience.” By-passing the 2004 Presidential elections because the moment was not right and because Bush had too even a chance of winning that one. Instead she made herself a household word and a cultural icon. She doesn’t have fundraisers, she has Hillraisers. Kerry’s name is rarely spoken after all, but everyone has heard of “Hillary.” By 2008, Bush and his policies had anything even beginning with the letter ‘r’ in disfavor, and it looked like the perfect moment for Super-Hillary, Candidate of Destiny, to swoop in and rescue the nation. Eight years where every decision, every Senate vote, and every comment had been dictated by cold calculation on how to obtain the White House was about to pay off.

But then this Johnny-come-lately, this junior Senator from Illinois comes along. He doesn’t have “experience.” He hasn’t been involved in National government for eight (16?) years. All he has is a charisma, a genuineness, that exploded on the scene at the National Convention four years ago. Worse, he’s just as hip as she is. But he won’t go away, won’t fall behind. She tries not taking him seriously, but Iowa proves that he must be taken seriously. She replaces her campaign manager, but it does no good. And now, he’s won eight straight primaries. Worse, he’s winning by bigger and bigger margins, and he’s getting those margins by getting more and more of the core “Hillary” voters to vote for him. Now, for the first time, he leads her even counting the superdelagates. Catastrophe! The train is running the wrong way and it’s picking up steam. CNN labels him the “Front-runner.”

It must be terribly frustrating.

Some people have noted that in adversity is when you can get the best look at a person’s true personality. Now, with the cracks beginning to show, we can see the true Hillary. The Hillary who doesn’t call to congratulate her “colleague” and opponent when he wins. Bitter. Resentful. Bitchy. Hillary.

This is the woman who will work to bring the partisans together? This is the diplomat who will solve the Middle-East without troops on the ground? She can’t even be a good sport about losing to a person she has described as a colleague.

Hillary. Who needs her?