Hillary Clinton's "Garbage Disposal" Strategy

I suspect that late at night, when no pesky outsiders are around to overhear, Hillary's advisers refer with knowing giggles to her campaign's latest strategy not as the "kitchen sink," but as a garbage disposal.

Just how much rubbish can they fabricate and feed to a gullible electorate? We're still finding that out, but I also suspect that Karl Rove sits somewhere in envy and admiration. Not even Bush & Co. debuted this much gall in 2000.

Anything's worth trying, I further suspect, when one knows one is not only best suited but downright entitled to the highest of public offices. If only the uncommitted among the great unwashed would shake off their doubts and vote Hillary en masse, then all would be well across this vast republic. But gosh darn it they're a stubborn lot. And if they won't listen to reason, so goes Hillary's reasoning, then she'll just have to dump mounds of garbage on them.

If you ever thought this sort of campaigning was the exclusive sales territory of Republican hucksters, think again. Because Hillary is showing even them a thing or two.

The day I realized that Mrs. Clinton is indeed willing to say absolutely anything in the reckless pursuit of still one more sucker was that dark day of late that she proclaimed her lead in the accumulated popular vote. Her manner was stunning. She didn't issue the proclamation with light-hearted ribbing -- "Hey, folks, you know, when you stop to count just my votes, I seem to be ahead" -- but with deadpan solemnity.

Her evangelizing is now less the lovable roguishness of an Elmer Gantry than the despicable tripe of a Jerry Falwell.

"I have received more votes by the people who have voted than anybody else," is what Hillary tells the Believers in the hope that more will follow, hoping like hell none of them wonders about the oddly inserted tautology of, "by the people who have voted." Oh well, perhaps they read only Murdoch newspapers and watch only Murdoch networks, is Hillary's additional hope. What they don't know and never stop to ponder can only help her.

But, as we know, her real target is the superdelegates. And as for these folks, Hillary must assume they're only semi-literate and therefore bother to read nothing at all -- like printed reconsiderations of the following:

"I won the states that we have to win -- Ohio, now Pennsylvania," is Hillary's updated chant on the stump. "It’s very hard to imagine a Democrat getting to the White House without winning those states" -- which is to say, the salt-of-the-earth kinds of people who inhabit them. It's all part of her "Obama is unelectable" spiel, directed squarely at the party's ultimate voters. She's been asserting this theme for some time, but with Pennsylvania there has now come a new emphasis.

But, naturally, it is no truer than her popular-vote swindle.

Reports Patrick Healy of the New York Times: "Mrs. Clinton says her popularity among blue-collar workers, women and Hispanics makes her the candidate to beat Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, in the swing states that decide presidential races.... Yet for all of her primary night celebrations in the populous states, exit polling and independent political analysts offer evidence that Mr. Obama could do just as well as Mrs. Clinton among blocs of voters with whom he now runs behind."

You can read it yourself here, which Hillary seems to think the superdelegates cannot, but in a nutshell: "According to surveys of Pennsylvania voters leaving the polls on Tuesday, Mr. Obama would draw majorities of support from lower-income voters and less-educated ones -- just as Mrs. Clinton would against Mr. McCain, even though those voters have favored her over Mr. Obama in the primaries."

What's more, "Obama appears better poised than Mrs. Clinton to pick up states that Democrats struggle to carry, or rarely do, in a general election, like Colorado, Iowa, Missouri and Virginia, all of which he carried in the primaries.... Indeed, if Mr. Obama does become the first African-American nominee of a major party, the electoral landscape of the South could be transformed with the likelihood of strong turnout of black voters in Republican-leaning states like Georgia and Louisiana."

There it is, in black and white, and with plenty more to back it up. But will any of this dissuade Hillary from indirectly huckstering to superdelegates the garbage that says she's better positioned against McCain in these states? Not on your life.

Because at this late, desperate and now dishonorable stage, garbage is all she has.