THE PROBLEM WITH HILLARY ISN'T EXACTLY HILLARY PER SE

I like Hillary and I bet she'd make a much better president than her husband did. And I love the idea of her shattering the most formidable of glass ceilings for more than half the people in America; truly inspiring. But one of her husband's worst failings-- the kind of people he surrounded himself with-- is one of hers as well. In fact, they're the same people. Now, don't go comparing them to the people around Bush, Al Capone, or Gambino boss "Little Nick" Corozzo. And it goes way beyond just the execrable corporate whore Terry McAuliffe. Just imagine that monstrosity back in power. Well... if Hillary wins, you won't have to imagine. Hillary's been busy firing a gaggle of faceless operatives in response to the Obama campaign's growing, perhaps unstoppable, momentum but the decision makers responsible for her pitiful straits-- Howard Wolfson, Mark Penn, McAuliffe, the anti-populists from the Hamilton Project-- are still calling the shots at Hillary, Inc.

Yesterday's Boston Globe had some glaring examples of how these creeps from Hillary's campaign have helped to turn so many Democrats off to her.

...Clinton will not concede the race to Obama if he wins a greater number of pledged delegates by the end of the primary season, and will count on the 796 elected officials and party bigwigs to put her over the top, if necessary, said Clinton's communications director, Howard Wolfson.

"I want to be clear about the fact that neither campaign is in a position to win this nomination without the support of the votes of the superdelegates,'' Wolfson told reporters in a conference call.

"We don't make distinctions between delegates chosen by million of voters in a primary and those chosen between tens of thousands in caucuses,'' Wolfson said. "And we don't make distinctions when it comes to elected officials'' who vote as superdelegates at the convention.

"We are interested in acquiring delegates, period,'' he added.

Clinton advisers rejected the notion that the candidate-- and the party-- would be badly wounded in the general election if the nominee were essentially selected by a group of party insiders.

"This is a nomination system that exists of caucuses, primaries, superdelegates and also the issue of voters in Florida and Michigan,'' states whose delegates currently will not be seated at the convention because they broke party rules by moving up their primaries to January, said Mark Penn, senior strategist for the Clinton campaign. But "whoever the nominee is, the party will come together behind that nominee,'' he said.

With the battle for the Democratic nomination excruciatingly close, supporters of both campaigns are questioning the nominating process. The Clinton camp has suggested that the caucuses-- where Obama has bested Clinton in all but one state-- are inherently undemocratic, since only a small percentage of eligible voters are able to make it to a caucus site and commit the time to vote at a particular hour.

Clinton-- who initially joined other Democrats in opposing Michigan and Florida's decisions to go ahead with early primaries-- now wants the votes of those primaries counted. The Obama camp thinks that idea is unfair, since candidates were not allowed to campaign in those states, and Clinton alone kept her name on the Michigan ballot, meaning Obama did not have a chance at getting even provisional delegates.

Americans, and especially Democrats, are truly sick of these kinds of Insider, Machiavellian tactics. Wolfson and Penn couldn't be doing Hillary a great disservice if they were trying to. But she's a big girl and she knows what she's got. And then, of course, there's the whole anti-democratic nature of the superdelegates. Today's NY Times is all over it... again.

“I think for superdelegates, the quality of where the win comes from should matter in terms of making a judgment about who might be the best general election candidate,” said Mark Penn, Mrs. Clinton’s senior campaign adviser.

..."Could we possibly have a nominee who hasn't won any of the significant states-- outside of Illinois?" Chief Strategist Mark Penn said. "That raises some serious questions about Sen. Obama."

It raises some serious questions about the people Hillary has chosen to be her closest advisors and her strategists. Obama has more votes from more people. Does it matter what states they live in? Not to the American people it doesn't? And how will people in Virginia, Maryland, Missouri, Washington, Georgia, Connecticut, etc feel about being referred to be the Clinton campaign as not from a "significant state." More of exactly the kind of divisiveness that Democrats don't want to hear from their candidates. When Hillary decided to throw her lot in with shameless corporate shills like Penn, Wolfson, McAuliffe and the rest, she sealed her own fate.