Down But Not Out

Yet another reminder of what I've been saying for days now (mostly as a reality check to myself): Never underestimate the Clintons.

That's what one of their early close associates reminded me the morning after I'd fallen for the prevailing notion that Hillary was about to lose New Hampshire. And I will never do so again.
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There's this recurring theme with the Clintons: They always face dramas, be they personal or political. Their political obituaries have been written too many times to count. They live by fourth-and-long, and they always convert.

Am I really buying all of this about Hillary's lurking revival? Or am I merely fearing it -- girding myself, that is, should it happen, considering that my recent columns ought to make clear that I don't want it to happen, and that I find Obama to be the far superior candidate and wish the Clintons would do us all the kind gesture of fading away?

It's both. I expect it. And I sure do dread it.

BUT I'm telling anyone who'll listen, the Democrats nominate Hillary at their own peril.

The Grand Old White Party Confronts Obama
THE curse continues. Regardless of party, it’s hara-kiri for a politician to step into the shadow of even a mediocre speech by Barack Obama.

Senator Obama’s televised victory oration celebrating his Chesapeake primary trifecta on Tuesday night was a mechanical rehash. No matter. When the networks cut from the 17,000-plus Obama fans cheering at a Wisconsin arena to John McCain’s victory tableau before a few hundred spectators in the Old Town district of Alexandria, Va., it was a rerun of what happened to Hillary Clinton the night she lost Iowa. Senator McCain, backed by a collection of sallow-faced old Beltway pols, played the past to Mr. Obama’s here and now. Mr. McCain looked like a loser even though he, unlike Senator Clinton, had actually won.
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Mr. McCain could get lucky, especially if Mrs. Clinton gets the Democratic nomination and unites the G.O.P., and definitely if she tosses her party into civil war by grabbing ghost delegates from Michigan and Florida. But those odds are dwindling. More likely, the Republican Party will face Mr. Obama with a candidate who reeks even more of the past and less of change than Mrs. Clinton does. I was startled to hear last week from a friend in California, a staunch anti-Clinton Republican businessman, that he was wavering. Though he regards Mr. McCain as a hero, he wrote me: “I am tired of fighting the Vietnam war. I have drifted toward Obama.”