Step 1: Form new political party.

Step 2: Win nomination of new political party.

Step 3: Hire Industrial Light & Magic to create convincing fake video of Obama and McCain snorting cocaine with a black transvestite oil-company lobbyist. Naked. Release in late October.

Step 4: Arrange election-day nuclear terror attacks on the three largest cities of every state except New York, New Jersey, and Florida.

And voila, Hillary can start writing her inaugural speech.

Rhubarbs, please don't give her any ideas.  She's crazy enough to try this one. ;-)

"He was vaguer about Indiana but noted that Hillary mentioned the issue in her speech there last night, which admittedly isn't something you would likely do if you thought your argument had bombed."

Normally, Mick, normally.  But this is Hillary.  She thinks if she keeps hammering the bad messaage people will come around, through sheer force of her will, and see that it is right.

At this point, I think she's running in an alternative universe primary where the following things are true:

1. The white working class voters are all that matter. All arguments must be angled towards these voters because:

2. The only path to the nomination is convincing the supers of electability. The best path to electability (in their twisted minds) is to win tons of those voters through pathetic economic populist appeals.

But contrary to what the pundits have been saying, HIllary Clinton is NOT an effective economic populist. She's riding the coattails of the Clinton economic brand and benefiting from Obama missteps.

Every minute Hillary stays in makes it harder and harder for her to plausibly run for governor of New York.  The camel's back has about 5 million straws on it.

She's humiliating herself (is that possible?) and burning her last embers with the party if she does this.

That's right, v.c., she is a faux economic populist. This is so transparent I don't see how anyone could believe otherwise.

Also, does Bill really want to have his own stature and his place in the collective memory of the Democratic Party go spiralling down the cliff along with Hillary's campaign?  He's already lost a considerable amout of affection and popularity over the last couple of months -- an astonishing shift, in fact -- and I don't see him regaining it fast.

Maybe he has no leverage any more, but his own legacy is on the line too:  ex-presidents aren't supposed to drive into the party's primary season like an armored division crossing a parking lot, and people are going to remember the bad bits.

anyone notice how they never mention the Primary that has the most remaining delegates; Oregon? If Hillary can't win it, it doesn't exist.

Time to fall on your sword Hillary. Romney did (and in a way so did Huckabee since he basically was a stalking horse). If you want to run a Huckabee type campaign, go for it.

irony, I still have that plaster bust of Bill Clinton on my desk.

But I've taken his presidential library off my life list of presidential tourism destinations. (Just in the last couple of years I've been to the Tippecanoe massacre site, James Buchanan's home, and Herbert Hoover's birthplace.)

I still admire Bill Clinton, the president, but I no longer want to belong to a Clinton-led political party.

Rhubarbs,

There's only one flaw to your four-step scenario -- however, this is easily amended to read: "...and voila, Hillary can dust off her inaugural speech."

"I still admire Bill Clinton, the president, but I no longer want to belong to a Clinton-led political party."

I donno... Chelsea looks pretty good in '16...

Rhubarb,

There is still an open ticket for the Liberman-Democrat Party, assuming that McCain isn't the shadow nominee. It would be a perfect fit; both love the republicans, both have testicular fortitude in regards to other people fighting their wars and both love taking their marching orders from corporate America. God, now that I think about it, HRC should run as VP on McCain's ticket. That would be one dangerously fucked-up pair of sellouts. It might be unstoppable.

"I donno... Chelsea looks pretty good in '16..."

Stop it now. Stop it. I need to have a future.

Wait, Garin is basing his assessment of the gas tax as an issue on the putative movement of white voters? That movement, if real, could be explained by many different factors, especially when you're talking about a demographic as big and heterogenous as "white voters".

If Garin was doing internal polling, why not just ask about the gas tax directly? If you aren't going to tailor your polls to answer the questions you're interested in, there's very little reason to hire a pollster in the first place.

Rhubarbs, we stopped off in Little Rock on the journey east last summer (leaving CA for my new job) and visited the Clinton Presidential Library.

On the avenue up to the entrance, a group of local-looking people, African American, extended family, who have obviously just completed their visit.

A hot August morning.

One younger woman is saying, as we pass, "Hey, I'm going to be voting for her!  I don't care about anything else."  I wonder if she's still thinking that.

It's well worth a visit, btw.

Michael Crowley you can't say "latter" unless there are only two. You have to say "last".

I am supporting Hillary only because I think that Obama is a fluke phenomenon. If she loses, enough of the Clinton dynasty. No Chelsea in '16.