I'd suggest pwn.

Is the term "strong closer" the Democratic party's euphemism for <A HREF="www.nytimes.com/.../24ONLANGUAGE.html">"loser"

The HTML in my post got messed up.  Here's the link:

www.nytimes.com/.../24ONLANGUAGE.html

"I'm sort of a day-at-a-time person"

-- Hillary Clinton

When I saw that quotation elsewhere this morning, I nearly laughed out loud. Of all the lies Hillary has told -- and she may very well have set an American record for dishonesty in the course of a single campaign -- this one might be the worst. Suddenly, her campaign is struggling to stay alive from day to day, but she tells us that all along, the fundamental nature of her personality, the bedrock reality of her selfhood, is to take things one day at a time? The condescension required to believe that anyone would believe such a statement is staggering, even by the standards of the Bush era. Of course she's not a day-at-a-time person. She has never in her public life shown the slightest hint of being a day-at-a-time sort of person. And if she really were a day-at-a-time person, then she would be vastly, possibly even heroically, unsuited to executive office.

I can deal with Hillary making stuff up from day to day to try to seize whatever scrap of momentary advantage she believes to be grabable. No one expected different -- or better -- from her anyway. But the reach of declaring that today's new slogan or calculation is who she really is and has been all along is just too insulting to bear.

Why was she not satisfied to speak honestly and say, for example, "I'm taking it one day at a time"? Why lie and claim that day-at-a-time is really her authentic nature? It's not, and we know it's not, and we know she knows we know it's not.

Well, in the sense that you can't have "closer" without "loser", then hellx is probably right.

I have been making the point for weeks that the reality has completely contradicted Hillary's (and the Hillaristas') claims that she has been gaining.  In a round of voting that included TX-OH-PA-IN-KY-WV, as good a hand as Hillary could ever have, Obama pretty much fought her to a draw.

That's why he won.  It was perfectly clear that the time would come when the reality of simple arithmetic would overwhelm the spin du jour of the Hillaristas.  Tomorrow would seem to be that day.

Of course, Hillary's endless spin was aided and abetted bigtime by the MSM that kept spying "momentum" and new theories of how Hillary could win when nothing whatever was changing other than the clock running out.

Rhuby, It this point she has no character, no inner values, no vision of the future(isn't that what one day at a time means?) She has become a tangled monad of blind ambition.

I strongly suggest the "Todays Comics" at Slate.com   The political cartoons are sorted by category. There are many very funny ones of little man/child Bush and many tributes to the political cartoonist's profession and imagination regarding Ms. Hillary.

There is a great cartoon of Hillary as Ahab, lashed in the harpoon lines to the great white whale Blind Ambition. Unfortunately the rope leads back to the good ship Democratic Party.

I have nothing to sell by the way regarding Slate, but their political cartoon section is the best I have found and a good antidote after too much BS.

"Domination" is in the eye of the dominatrix.

"Defining 'Dominate' Down"

"Defining something down"  has become a useless cliche.

Using it merely shows the decline in originality of headline composition.

As have you, Jackson.

roidubouloi, don't ever tire of dumping on HIllary?

You are a one person lynch mob, Rodo!

I await tomorrow with fear. I hope she drops out, but I just can't put it beyond her to go all the way and sink Obama so she can run in 2012.

She can try to sink Obama, but she won't be running in 2012.  She won't be running if he does it, and she won't be running if he doesn't, because too many people will see her as the reason why.

jackson, "Defining [word] Down" is indeed a fell cliche. But not the worst. The worst cliche in current American English is "path to" and its fraternal twin "clear path to". We don't have plans anymore, we don't ever achieve anything. We just have paths to things. We have a path to victory/withdrawal in Iraq. A path to lower deficits. A path to Middle East peace. Hillary has, or doesn't have, a path to the nomination. "Path" is the comeback word of the twenty-first century; between 1985 and 2005 it had all but disappeared from the language, but thee short years later everything is a goddam path to something else.

The rule of thumb is that when people say they have a "path" to something, this means that (A) they have absolutely no idea how to accomplish the thing and have no reasonable plan for doing so, (B) the thing itself is either impossible or implausible, and (C) the claim to have a "path" is therefore nothing more than a stall to buy time for purely tactical reasons.

"Closed strongly"?  She scored some points in garbage time.  In the game I was watching, Obama was ahead by a field goal at half time, came out and came out and scored four unanswered touchdowns in the third quarter.  Hillary then came out and scored a field goal in the opening minutes of the fourth quarter and 2 touchdowns in the last 5 minutes of the game.  She scored 10 unanswered points in the fourth quarter, but Obama still won the game by 14 points.

Thank you, jackson.

I AM tired of dumping on Hillary, but even more tired OF Hillary.  However, as long as she continues to undermine the Democratic party, I consider it a solemn responsibility of all good Democrats to dump on her.  We must each do our small part to make clear that her crypto-Republicanism and Rovian campaign tactics are not welcome in the Democratic party and will be resisted.  I dearly hope that starting tomorrow she will quickly fade into oblivion and there will not any longer be so much as an occasion to think about Hillary.

"I dearly hope that starting tomorrow she will quickly fade into oblivion and there will not any longer be so much as an occasion to think about Hillary."

Roid, I think it'll be a good lesson when my kids (who are nowhere on the horizon) take high-school American History and read about "The Presidential Campaign of 2008" which has certainly been the most objectively interesting in my (admittedly shorter than some) lifetime.  Hillary's campaign will be a useful teaching tool in the future, and will be talked about for a very long time.  Her campaign, though, is different.  I'm with you hoping that, by tomorrow, we will have seen the end of "Hillary '08."

Well, bigfish, it you mean useful tool as to what not to do, it certainly will be discussed.

I think everyone here at TNR has done a truly magnificent job in making a small contribution to the campaign.  Having done some, I am convinced that political campaigns are a type of performance art.  For a long time, the public was like a modern audience, constrained to sit quietly in the theater.  Now, we are like an audience in Shakespeare's time, almost participants in the combination of tragedy, comedy, and sheer farce being played out in front of us.  

For reasons of her own, Hillary Clinton was unwilling to withdraw from the race even after it had become futile -- at the latest, March 4 in my estimation.  She might have chosen to run just to highlight her policy positions, but instead she chose to make it personal.  The potential for damage to the party's prospects was enormous, and we are not yet out of the woods.  It had to be contained.

I do not happen to believe that Hillary is restrained in any way out of concern for the party.  But she doesn't exist in a vacuum either.  One blog asked, What does Hillary want?  The answer is simple:  status.  She wanted it to be the status that comes with the presidency.  Failing that, as much as she can continue to enjoy.  Therefore, she is vulnerable to pressure from her social class, the wealthy pooh-bah's of the Democratic party.  And even those who are aligned with her, her clientele, retain their own interests.  They don't want the party shut out of the status that comes with the White House and they don't want to be shut out of a Democratic White House.  Even the king of France at the height of the ancien regime was far from oblivious to the opinions of his social peers.  Therefore, the means to impose restraint on Hillary has always been to make clear to her wealthy and/or politically powerful loyalists that if she goes to far, their interests would be threatened.  They in turn impose some limits on her.

We here are tiny.  But the noise that has been made, with everyone playing their role, pro- and anti-Hilllary, has definitely helped in shaping the opinion of the Democratic "nobility" who surround Hillary as to the existence of limits and where the limits lie.  The push-back exerted here and on other internet sites therefore has made a real contribution toward keeping a campaign that has constantly threatened to slip out of bounds, and has stepped over the line more than once, from sinking us.

Hillary is done.  There is certainly damage in her wake, but it is always a tricky thing to kill the king or queen, especially when it cannot be done overnight.  Had it not been for the instant push-back from the web, and the impact that has on the opinions of pundits and upon our political aristocracy, I am convinced it would have been much worse.

Everyone helped in his or her self-assigned niche.  Without the nturners, pccostellos, jacobts, jmkerrs, and our Republicans, chanrobt, butchie, we could not have had this noisy, raucous conversation.  Without the slightest bit of snark or irony, I truly believe it has been a great job of citizen participation in an era and medium that does not let us sit it out.

*  *  *

Obama is surely aware of social status (how could he not be given his history?), but I think his ambition is quite different.  I believe that he sees the US in a very perilous global position, faced with the pressures of terrorism, global trade, and rising new economic powers.  Our domestic social divisions are something we can no longer afford.  When we were geographically isolated or in the years after World War II when we truly were pre-eminent, perhaps.  But not any longer.  I think he wants to move the country past them because we have urgent work to do to secure our position in the world for the next century and beyond.  And I think he sees both the urgency and the connection between our domestic and international problems in a manner that most of his political peers do not.  I happen to believe that is the reason why he chose to run now when he might easily have waited.  And I think he will win and start moving us down the path we need to travel.  If not, we may waste so much more time and so much of our formidable resources that our position may not be recoverable four or eight years down the road.  The world turns very fast these days.  Think of how much has changed in just the last eight years.

Rhubarbs, I disagree.  I think Hillary is the epitome of a "day to day" person.  Her campaign has been obsessed with winning the next immediate battle, with little deep thought to any long term objective.  

If she had any long-term ability to plan strategy, she would have won the nomination in early February.  

Oh noble Obama, lead us to the promised land. We who are so cynical when it comes to Hillary's every eyeblink, are young and fresh and naive and worshipful that you, the Great One, will lead us up mountaintops for a better view and down into the valleys of peace and prosperity and equality. Amen.

The journey of 1,000 miles .  .  .

And, of course, it helps if you set off in the right direction.

hewstino, I understand what you're saying, and I disagree to this extent: Hillary did not come into the primaries without a plan. She had a plan. A 27-state plan to win big, win early, and push her opponents out of the race no later than the week of Super Tuesday. It was a detailed, 14-month plan, and Hillary was dogged and disciplined in following it. Then, as always happens, plan met reality, and reality had other ideas. The problem is, Hillary did not. She stuck with her plan even after first contact with the enemy showed it to be flawed, and she failed to make changes or plan beyond her 27-state plan until Super Tuesday came and went and she was still losing. Since then, she's been essentially winging it. But winging it after driving a failed plan that far into the ground is not proof of her talents for improvisation.

But a real one-day-at-a-time person would never have gotten locked into so restricting a plan in the first place, and would never have stuck with his battle plan once the opening engagement went so badly awry.

Rhubarbs,

That addresses only her campaign organization.  Granted, it is is not easy to turn a farflung organization on a dime, but, thematically, her campaign started to skid as soon as it really met Obama.  She couldn't even figure our how to respond to that.  

I really do not believe that Hillary understood much about political campaigning prior to March 2008.  Yes, she had been standing next to, or in for, Bill for years, but it is easy to think you are better than you are when you play with a Michael Jordan.  In New York, she never had to win the nomination and never had any competition worth the name.  She needed a Team B to find the holes in her election scenario but instead she got the sycophants (see Sunstein today) who become like barnacles for people with power over a long period of time.  On the other hand, Obama got the ingenious insurgents who could see all the holes in the Hillary scenario and planned accordingly.  The whole thing reminds me of the Maginot Line.  The Germans took a look and just rode right around it while it never seems to have occurred to the French that anyone would use "neutral" territory to do such a thing.