Hillary's Derangement

For a long time, there has been a perspective out there that Hillary, or at least her surrogates, were going out of their way to exploit racism to better position her against Obama. It was and remains a topic on which I remain agnostic. Some of the evidence out there I think is pretty unconvincing, and I think when you have a machine that's speaking a million words a day on a subject, it's easy to build a case for almost anything by cherrypicking statements, but I think it's still a very plausible position. I don't think Hillary is anything close to what we paradigmatically call "a racist" but she obviously is smart enough to see the racial dimensions in what she says, enough to know that they exist at least to some degree in almost anything she could say, so it was always going to be a question of how much one could draw on that strain of thinking without getting queasy over it.

Her extreme tenacity, to the point of ridiculousness, over remaining in contention despite having lost the race irretrievably months ago, relates to the race-baiting charge in two ways, both as a cause and as an effect. This stubborn resolve to fight obviously evinces the kind of passion to win that would tempt her to accept a degree of racist support that she otherwise would not. That is the causal side.

On the effect side, one sees the deep denial of defeat and wonders at what has gotten into her most avid supporters. Getting carried away, locked in a Hillary bubble, being wedded to the historic symbol her victory would represent, they're all poweful. But maybe it's cynical, but I find it very easy to imagine that racial animus is furnishing some of this intensity.

Watching her poison Obama's candidacy by comparing him negatively to McCain; hold a gun to the head of the Party to get her way; arguing incessantly that she should win regardless of what the rules say, and demanding the rules be broken or changed to accommodate her ambitions, her supporters, and her view of the party's interests; and failing to concede after victory has become all but impossible (as it is now and has been for months) and after the mainstream has finally reasoned this, thanks to an absolute majority of delegates won by her opponent; where has one ever seen this? Hostage situations? Suicide cults?

In politics, this kind of resistance to law can work. It plays on mass support of great intensity. I am increasingly reminded of some stalwart recalcitrant like Orval Faubus, placing his body in front of the advancing forces of morality and law, to hold off the inevitable one more day. In his case, the national guard was coming to desegregate the schools. Yesterday it was the Rules Committee voting to allow the imminent desegregation of the presidency. It's an uncomfortable comparison, but apt. Even if it were not apt, it is a comparison that grows in resonance every hour that Hillary does not stand aside to let her biracial opponent pass. When it becomes too evident, it will blight her image indelibly.