Hillary is in Florida
...and she's pissing me off again.

1. First, knock off all the patriotic, principles-of-democracy crap. The nominating process is not an election run by the government. It is a selection process governed by the Democratic Party - governed with certain rules. When your vote is not counted, it's not because the government is inhibiting your fundamental American right, it's because the state-level morons working under the *party you chose to join* screwed up, and in this case purposely and defiantly so. The way we chose who was "it" in tag when I was 7 years old was also not entirely fair, but it wasn't an example of my rights being violated; it was an example of the jokers I played with not knowing anything better than the one-potato, two-potato.

Everyone is perfectly free to vote for President without participating in the party nominating process, or free to join the other party if you don't like how things are run, or better yet, join together with like-minded folks and start your own damned party and make the rules exactly the way you would like. Democratic rules are contrived and should be changed somewhat, but they were understood and accepted by all coming in.

2. What kind of person can make a straight-face argument that Michigan votes especially should be counted for anything in this process? I know that lawyers are taught to advocate forcefully with the best argument they can, but is there no shame? She thinks the "American" way to go is to crown her with a 300,000 to 0 win there?? If Obama were making this argument, she and her supporters would be ridiculing him to no end. *She was the only name on the ballot*, not unlike Saddam Hussein in recent Iraqi elections. *Of course she won* but, thankfully - because it would be so unfair - that contest was not sanctioned by the party (see #1, above).

3. By pressing this popular-vote argument, she wants a way to claim victory, obviously, so that she never ever has to concede defeat. When Obama is the nominee, she won't agree that he defeated her; she will claim that she won, but that the process selected him. This is what she wants - not to be VP, not to stand up for voter rights. She wants to claim victory, no matter who the nominee is. She's a Clinton, God love her. But in doing that, she is de-legitimizing his nomination in the minds of millions of Democratic voters who want to believe in her campaign and won't see through her lawyerly determination to make obscene arguments with a straight face. That is my fear at this point. Yes, she has stopped attacking him directly for the most part, but we risk losing millions of votes from Clinton supporters who believe - falsely - that the nomination is being stolen from her.

So, lots of media types are asking why she's continuing, and here's my answer. I think she is doing 2 things, and both of them are a pain in the ass: she's fulfilling a personal need to (and we've all known people like this) never lose at anything, but more importantly she's positioning herself to run in 4 years, not to give herself another chance, because she will have already won once, but to give the process another chance to get it right. At this point, I think Obama could win the Presidency and she would still run against him in 2012. She'll be an annoying peanut gallery critic and then run to bring him down. Hell, I could believe she will be his Vice President for the next 4 years *and still run against him in 2012.*

Argh, wasn't I going to move on?! Why do I watch the news during the day?