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For those of you, like me, who watch MSNBC if Keith Olbermann or Rachel Maddow are on set, you were probably hoping like hell Rachel Maddow was wrong Tuesday night. While everyone on planet earth was forecasting a Clinton exit, or at least graceful winnowing of her campaign, Maddow continually disagreed.
We should learn not to so quickly doubt a fiery and spot-on progressive with a successful radio program and basically oracular treatment on Keith Olbermann’s show, especially when she is also a Rhodes scholar with a Ph.D. from Oxford. The fiery progressive was passionately insistent she saw no sign Clinton would slow down and that the close win in Indiana did not change the basic calculus. Maddow argued that Clinton was not looking for a mathematical or logical path to the nomination, was not concerned about her future place in the Democratic party or about the potential negative impact on Barack Obama.
The brainy doc kept repeating a phrase that haunted me that night and haunts me even more with today’s news: Clinton, Maddow repeated, was looking at a "post rational" path to the nomination. My interpretation of "post-rational" was and remains that Clinton will do anything and everything to obtain the nomination whatever the odds, whatever the cost to her reputation and her party and whatever the consequences.
Today’s news bears Maddow out. I will not repeat the details, but look here for Clinton rejecting a reasonable proposal from the Michigan Democratic party, insisting on having only her delegates and votes counted and none counted for Obama. Look here for Clinton arguing race – really, racism (non-rational motivation) – to support her claim to superior electoral prospects. And here for the argument that her loans of 11.4 million dollars to her own campaign (another Maddow point) show she is hell-bent on being the nominee because she is extremely limited in her ability to pay the money back to her campaign after the convention, unless, of course, she is the nominee.
The lesson: heed the Maddow.
The likely result: goodbye Democratic Party; hello President McCain.
