No longer must Barack Obama look to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright as a source of black liberation theology, for he has Hillary Clinton and she's setting him freer by the day.
In fact, I should think political handicappers everywhere have been frantic this weekend restructuring David Brooks' public offering of 20-to-1 odds of a Hillary comeback to something far closer to an absolute write-down. If you had your money on the IL-AR-PA-NY native, then all I can advise is that you join a support group to share your pain, but don't -- I repeat, do not -- double down. You'd have better luck being bullish on Bear Stearns.
Not that Hillary's devout core of followers will care, or be partisanly fazed in the least, but the last 48 hours have been brutal for the "most vetted" candidate -- a descriptive status that requires regular updating, and for good reason. For journalistic vetters, Hillary is the ideal vettee, because playing it straight is simply beyond her indefatigable Nixonian urges.
The recent brutality began late Friday -- "take-out-the-trash day," as it's known, and this particular Friday was trashier than most. Hillary finally released her tax returns -- weeks late and a year's worth short -- but the clever timing meant to minimize hostile public reaction was a trifle less clever than intended.
As the New York Times put it: "In what proved to be an awkward juxtaposition, the disclosure of the records — which revealed the Clintons to be in the top one-hundredth of 1 percent, or roughly 14,500, of all taxpayers — came on the day that Mrs. Clinton called for the creation of a cabinet-level post to tackle poverty."As understatements go, awkward, indeed. But at least that wretched insult publicly overpowered, for the moment, the wretched insult of delaying, once again, the release of her 2007 returns. And as we know, the Clintons live for nothing more than the moment. Lord, just get us through one more day. We'll deal with today's backlash in defense of yesterday tomorrow.
But, oops, what did tomorrow bring, which today would be yesterday? You got it. Another scandal.
Hillary, it seems, has been fibbing again. For five weeks Hillary ...
That abomination speaks for itself. As does this one, which is to say, yet another one from merely the past couple days:has featured in her campaign stump speeches the story of a health care horror: an uninsured pregnant woman who lost her baby and died herself after being denied care by an Ohio hospital because she could not come up with a $100 fee. The woman, Trina Bachtel, did die last August, two weeks after her baby boy was stillborn at O’Bleness Memorial Hospital in Athens, Ohio. But hospital administrators said Friday that Ms. Bachtel was under the care of an obstetrics practice affiliated with the hospital, that she was never refused treatment and that she was, in fact, insured. "We implore the Clinton campaign to immediately desist from repeating this story," said Rick Castrop, chief executive officer of the O’Bleness Health System. Linda M. Weiss, a spokeswoman for the not-for-profit hospital, said the Clinton campaign had never contacted the hospital to check the accuracy of the story.
Mark Penn, chief campaign strategist to the New York senator, has apologized for meeting with Colombia's U.S. ambassador in his separate role as a lobbyist hired by the South American country to win congressional approval of [a] trade deal with the United States [that his candidate opposes].
But I'm sure Hillary knew nothing about it. She's a perpetual victim; either subjected, like Captain Queeg, to the machinations of disloyal subordinates, or, like Richard Nixon, to the machinations of a hostile press.
For weeks, as many progressives pondered the senator's disruptive campaign, their underlying sentiment mirrored those famous words of Cromwell to the Rump Parliament: "You have been sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!"
But no longer. Let her bamboozle those few she still can. Every passing day only makes Barack Obama look that much better.
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