THE TYGRRRR EXPRESS

I apologize in advance for bringing you all an irrelevant column about lightweights.

I was looking forward to bringing my readers the conclusion of the Bill O’Reilly interview of Hillary Clinton. Unfortunately, that is exactly what I will be delivering.

I had the pleasure and honor of attending one of the most intelligent debates I have ever witnessed. Either that means I do not get out enough, or the three participants were brilliant. Perhaps a bit of both is true.

I will hold off on revealing who the debaters were, since I will be blogging about it for several days. Nevertheless, after watching and meeting heavyweights, O’Reilly and Clinton did not measure up. They are both heavyweights in a vacuum, but for reasons that will be articulated soon enough, they are not the best and brightest. This is not to denigrate them. It is just that I witnessed intellectual greatness, reducing the perceived quality of a merely very good discussion between Bill O’Reilly and Hillary Clinton.

One thing O’Reilly did after the interview was address his using of words such as “bull” and “bupkus” in disputing Hillary’s assertions. He pointed out that had she been President and not just a candidate, he would have been more tactful. I felt he should have been more tactful with somebody seeking the office. One can be tactful without being too deferential. O’Reilly was better in the second half of the interview. His self analysis was noble, but I still found his reasoning flawed. I may not like Hillary, but she should be treated with the respect that comes with being First Lady, and until a month ago, a serious candidate for the White House.

With that, here is the conclusion of the Hillary Clinton interview by Bill O’Reilly.

Hillary Clinton does believe we are in the middle of a shooting War on Terror. She believes Iran is a significant danger. Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. She claims she would be very tough on Iran.

Yet then O’Reilly pointed out that withdrawing from Iraq was good for Iran. Hillary claimed the mission is done, since Saddam is gone. This is what President Bush said when he said “Mission Accomplished.” Hillary I guess agrees with the President.

Hillary believes that Iran picking up arms would galvanize the Iraqis. O’Reilly disputed this by saying that withdrawal from Iraq will be seena s weakness, and that Iran will not be stopped, as oil prices would skyrocket.

Both O’Reilly and Hillary believe speculators are driving up oil prices. Apparently supply and demand is lost on both of them. On the way home in the car, I heard Mark Levin for the first time. He said that the only thing O’Reilly knows about oil is what he puts in his hair.

Hillary was asked if she knew where the primary Taliban haven was. Hillary seemed to have a pretty goo grasp of this issue, knowing it was in Pakistan. She did not know the city of Quetta, but most people would not know that.

Where Hillary is wrong is in her insistence on getting tough with Musharraf. If Musharrraf goes down, the fundamentalists that would take over would be much worse.

Nevertheless, Hillary came across as an adult on this issue. She has done her homework. This does not make her right, but at least she can discuss issues in depth.

O’Reilly praised how the Bush Administration has decimated Al Queda since 9/11. He wanted to know if Hillary would support waterboarding under extreme conditions. She would not.

George Tenet and Michael Scheuer both support it. They are far from the end all be all, but Hillary would not say who supported her position. Hillary wants an aggressive Al Queda effort, and do whatever it takes, but will not engage in waterboarding.

Hillary correctly pointed out that all three candidates are against it, and that Senator John McCain knows more about it than her and O’Reilly combined.

Again, from a political standpoint, she is completely wrong. However, a cold impartial analysis showed a woman who was well prepared for a tough interview.

Hillary stated that she would not crack down on sanctuary cities. She cited the example of people not willing to report crimes for fear of being deported. This was the Rudy Giuliani position.

Hillary wants to go after employers. That is not wrong, but she seems to blame corporate America for everything. She also disagreed with O’Reilly on what the meaning of a sanctuary city actually is.

Hillary falsely claimed that those against illegal immigration want door to door searches.

She criticized President Bush on the issue, even though he favored a guest worker program. Then again, she disagrees with him because he exists.

When challenged as to if the interview with Hillary was his most fun, O’Reilly joked that it was not because he once interviewed Cher. Hillary laughed.

If I did not know Hillary, this interview alone would get me to consider voting for her. Luckily I do know enough about her to never consider that as an option.

O’Reilly conducted himself better than in the first half of the interview. He was more respectful. Hillary did well during both halves. O’Reilly had a bad first half, but redeemed himself after the midpoint.

When O’Reilly joked about Lanny Davis revealing that Hillary Clinton was a naughty schoolgirl in law school, Hillary shined in her response. She joked she would support torturing Lanny Davis in this extreme situation. It was a genuine funny moment.

Then she danced around like a naughty schoolgirl with Van Halen’s “Hot for teacher” in the background. No, not really. The Carl Jr. “Flat Buns” teacher in the burger commercial would be more appropriate. She is more butt plus than butt minus.

Hillary delivered a solid performance. Most importantly, Hillary looked…human.

Had she done interviews like these a year ago, she would be the nominee as inevitably thought, not the afterthought who crashed and burned against a political novice.

eric

Back to business, or in the case of the Tygrrrr Express, politics.

Hillary Clinton may be more craven than the average politician, but she is no dummy. With her campaign on the verge of being nothing more than a spectacular collapse, she is determined to try everything and anything. Her latest act of desperation involves going on the O’Reilly Factor with Bill O’Reilly.

When she was trying to win the hearts and what passes for minds of the leftist lunatics that hate anything and everything that is decent and right, she bragged about standing up to Bill O’Reilly. She was basically Christopher Dodd with breasts (Then again, his years of drinking…never mind). Now that her campaign is on the verge of resembling that of Mr. Dodd, right down to the drinking shots, she has given up on the fringes and decided to triangulate back to the center. She will talk to the man she has previously denigrated.

First of all, democrats react to Bill O’Reilly the way republicans react to Al Queda. The left sees O’Reilly, who last time I checked was merely an individual asking tough questions, as evil. Reporters are supposed to ask tough questions.

Nevertheless, regardless of her motives, Hillary entered the No Spin Zone. I expected Mr. O’Reilly to be polite. He knows how to show respect without being too deferential. If anybody expected him to call her a pinhead, they were sorely disappointed. With that, below is my review and analysis of Hillary’s appearance on the O’Reilly Factor.

The beginning was a discussion about Pastor Jeremiah Wright, and Hillary mixed mock indignation with an unwillingness to pile on too much.

Then the conversation turned to energy policy. Hillary stated “We are not acting like Americans. We are not in charge. We need to be in charge.” I do not know what this means. She even said, “There is no basis for oil companies to have these windfall profits.” That is socialism.

O’Reilly was incredulous when Hillary stated that she would “take on OPEC.” She would sue them. She might honestly believe that they would listen to her.

She deflected when O’Reilly pointed out that Bill Clinton did nothing for 8 years on energy policy.

O’Reilly then really went aggressive, saying that Hillarycare would bankrupt the country. Hillary demurred like a sweet girl, shaking her head and saying, “no I’m not, I’m not.” Yet health care is her strong suit in terms of arguing. She insisted that she was not starting a new bureaucracy. She wants to regulate the companies. O’Reilly was surprisingly aggressive, and Hillary did not back down. The debate was tough but civilized.

O’Reilly does not want higher taxes, and Hillary was very smug in saying O’Reilly did well in the 1990s.

Hillary praised Ronald Reagan for forming a blue ribbon social security commission with Tip O’Neill.

O’Reilly pointed out that Hillary wants income redistribution, taking from the wealthy and giving to the less affluent. O’Reilly outright stated that her income redistribution plan is socialism. She claimed that she was the same as Teddy Roosevelt.

They continued to spar on taxes, with O’Reilly saying that his neighborhood on Long Island worked because tax rates were low. Hillary said that was untrue, and pointed to tax rates in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s.

They did not reach agreement, but this forum allowed Hillary to fight, which is her specialty. These are two diametrically opposed views, O’Reilly and Hillary, and they both offered their vision forcefully.

O’Reilly asked Hillary if she was more polarizing than Obama, and if he was nicer. Hillary was very tough on this question, announcing that she has been bipartisan, however toughness is required to take on oil and drug companies.

O’Reilly then pointed out that Upstate New York has suffered the last few years, and that Hillary blamed President Bush. He also pointed out that New Yorkers pay the highest taxes in the nation.

He then asked her about the report showing Fox News was more fair towards her than other networks. When asked if she was surprised, she demurred, and then reaffirmed that running for President is a tough job, and that she is tested.

I was surprised by the tone of the interview. O’Reilly was quite pushy.

I like O’Reilly. I dislike Hillary. Yet he was more combative than I expected, and she handled herself very well. While this was not a debate per se, Hillary did well in this forum.

O’Reilly should have been softer in his tone. It is one thing to ask tough questions, but it almost seemed as if he was shouting at her. A certain amount of dignity needs to be adhered to when interviewing a Presidential candidate. This does not mean a softball interview has to take place, but O’Reilly simply went too far.

The rest of the interview will take place a day later, but the first part was Hillary at her best, and O’Reilly far from that. O’Reilly was unctious. Hillary usually is, but not on this day.

It was a good interview for her.

eric

Barack Obama seems to be very difficult to dislike. Instead of treating Fox News like enemy combatants, he decided to go on and give a lengthy interview with Chris Wallace.

Yes, this is the same Chris Wallace that turned Bill Clinton into a finger waving crybaby.

While I have consistently stated that I am voting for John McCain, I have tried to cover debates and appearance as a dispassionate observer. Barack Obama has had some terrible performances as of late, with his worst being in the Pennsylvania debate. It is with this detached focus that I evaluate his performance being interviewed by Chris Wallace.

Obama simply shined. Thre is no way around it. As bad as he has been lately, he was that good in this interview.

He probably enraged a few on the left by stating that he would vote to confirm General Petraeus as the head of Central Command (Centcom). When asked pointed questions about how his relationship with Petraeus worked, he gave what I found to be clear and intelligent answers.

If General Petraeus questioned his strategy, he would absolutely listen to him and consider his feedback. However, he is not wrong to say that the President must make the final call, since it is the President who’s job is on the line with the voters. While I do not agree with Obama’s stance on the Iraq War, he came across as very humble, which would make sense for a man who criticizes President Bush for (in Obama’s eyes) promising to be humble and then not being so.

This is in stark contrast to the Hillary Clinton crowd that spoke of “General Betray Us.”

Obama also made a very bold statement regarding race in the election that everyody should hear.

“If I lose the geenral election, it will not be because of race. It will be because I did not communicte my message effectively enough to the voters. It will not be because of my race.”

He also stated that Americans are better than that, and this is a subject of much debate.

There is a raging argument going on that suggests that many Americans lie to pollsters when they say they would vote for a black man, but recoil when they are in the voting booth.

This closet racism may exist, but it is among demcrats. It is absolutely a leftist problem, because it is the left that pits people against each other.

Al Gore introduced the world to Willie Horton in 1988 against Michael Dukakis, yet Lee Atwater and President George Herbert Walker Bush get the blame for what one liberal introduced against a fellow liberal.

This feeds into the nonsense that “republicans will play the race card, so we had better do it first to toughen up our own candidate.”

This argument is nonsense because republcians are scared to death of the race issue. A republican who breathes incorrectly can be called a racist. Leftists can yell racist comments and nobody cares. Bill and Hillary Clinton played the race card in South Carolina, using the republican defense as justification.

Barack Obama has seen through this. He admitted that John McCain is not a racist. Therefore, any liberal group that tries this tactic will lose, because their own candidate has disavowed this.

On this issue, Obama’s respect shines through.

If Obama finally wins the nomination, and after Hillary Clinton is dragged from the stage kicking and screaming, a campaign about actual issues can take place.

Barack Obama and John McCain are both good, decent men who have very different ideas.

Obama is wrong on Iraq. He is wrong on trade. He is wrong on taxes, especially the capital gains tax and the Bush tax cuts. His position on Israel is hopelessly naive and misguided.

Many will disagree with me on these issues, but at least these are legitimate issues to begin with.

Many who claim that an Obama loss would be due to racism are playing the race card themselves. After all, ask a black or white liberal if Judge Clarence Thomas or GOPAC Chairman Michael Steele are black, and the contorted answers about being “authentically black” are brought up.

For the Milli Vanillionth time (they were black, but whatever their race, their music bothered me), race is about one and only one criteria. It is an issue of pigmentation. That is determined by melanin content. Being black is not an attitude, a state of mind, or a feeling. Claiming Bill Clinton was black because he was basically brought up in a trailer trash home is an insult to many upwardly mobile blacks that do not like to be portrayed as wife beaters and alcoholics.

Bill Clinton was not a child of blackness. He was a child of poverty, or at least a lower socioeconomic strata. There is no shame in being poor, but it is nothing to brag about either.

Barack Obama has been forced to downplay his wealth, because that might make him less authentic.

Barack Obama is an American success story that should not be President for policy reasons alone.

When a liberal tries to portray republicans as racists for having the nerve to support war hero Hohn McCain when America is at war, and we agree with his prescriptions, ask them how they feel about Clarence Thomas. Explain to them that disliking him is automatically racism. When they claim it is merely his views they find offensive, ask them why wanting to cut capital gains tax cuts and continue the War in Iraq until the job is done are racist positions. Then watch them babble.

Barack Obama was very impressive on Chris Wallace last night, and as we all know, Wallace is tough. Rather than cry about being asked tough questions, as many Daily Kossacks continue to do, tough questions should be encouraged. After all, Chris Wallace is not Al Queda. He is just a reporter doing his job, and one of the few who does it responsibly. As many different phrases of the same question goes, how can one stand up to world leaders when they cannot face a reporter?

Bill Kristol correctly pointed out that many of Obama’s answers lacked substance. Even if that was true, the fact that I did not notice that during the interview only goes to show how effective he was. To go back and watch it again, and judge the performance in a harsher light, would be unfair.

The answer is not to vote against Obama solely on his race. That is racism. However, voting for him because of his race is also racism, and the guilty white liberals supporting him might want to think about that before throwing racial stones.

Republicans have no reason to play the race card, and John McCain is too good a man to do it. We are right on the issues, and should win that way. I would only hope that Barack Obama lives up to his promise to want to heal America. If he loses the general election, the best way to do this is to promise to support John McCain on issues of agreement, go against him on areas of disagreement, but be respectful of the office he holds.

After all, anybody can be magnanimous when they win. I am giving my word of honor that if Barack Obama wins, I will support him on the occasions I agree with him. I supported Bill Clinton on welfare reform and NAFTA.

If Obama can be as gracious and eloquent in defeat as he was during the Chris Wallace interview, then he will have lifted up the discourse in America.

I know John McCain will do what is right win or lose. If Barack Obama does as well, America will be better off for it.

This is why I want Obama to defeat Hillary. The 2008 Presidential race will be tough, sincere, and won by a likable person, democrat or republican.

The well has been poisoned, but it is not too late to chlorinate the toxic political environment.

Mr. Obama will be formidable. After all, he does not seem to be afraid of Chris Wallace, nor does he blame him afterwards for daring to ask tough questions.

Mr. Obama was well prepared. Mr. McCain will be as well.

eric

Even liberals have a low point that they would not cross. I just do not know where that low point occurs.

Once again, Bush Derangement Syndrome has led one liberal in particular to go overboard even by incredibly low liberal standards.

A basic premise ignored by many on the left is that just because one has the legal right to do something, it might be immoral. Just because one can do something does not mean they should. This starts with protesting.

When President Bush is giving a speech, protesters have the right to hold up signs and protest his leadership. That is democracy, and it is vital. Yet while these protesters are allowed to yell, scream, and shout vulgarities, I would argue that decency should request that they tone down the foul language.

Trying to win that argument is a nonstarter. I will instead go one step further and argue that the President’s family is not fair game unless they put themselves in the political arena. Hillary Clinton was fair game as First Lady because she injected herself into policy making decisions. Chelsea Clinton should have been off limits. Chelsea Clinton now is fair game because she is campaigning.

This is important because it was former President Bill Clinton that declared in his televised temper tantrum about Kenneth Starr that “all people, even Presidents, have private lives.”

John Kerry and John Edwards were hurt significantly when they brought up the sexual orientation of Mary Cheney. Vice President Cheney is fair game. His daughter, who was apolitical, and did not even play a role in her father’s campaign’s (her sister did), should have been left alone in peace.

Apparently the rules of civilized society simply do not apply to the great unwashed, aka liberals.

First Lady Laura Bush and her daughter Jenna have co-written a book. This book has nothing to do with the administration, or with anything remotely politically controversial. They wrote a children’s book called “Read all about it.”

Now unless one is violently opposed to helping children learn to read better, this should not be a political issue. Unlike a certain former First Lady, Laura Bush does not try to advance her agenda. She does what a First Lady should do…keep her mouth shut and talk about harmless warm and fuzzy issues. This is not sexism. Dennis Thatcher kept his mouth shut while Lady Margaret Thatcher did the heavy lifting.

Therefore, to show up and protest the Iraq War at a book discussion about child literacy involving people that had nothing to do with the decision to go to war is ludicrous, and not very decent. To curse and verbally abuse people is downright rude.

I am not sure liberals even acknowledge this part of the argument. After all, they see President Bush as poison, therefore everyone he touches is poison, therefore if his dog barks at them, they should bark back because the dog’s owner favored removing Saddam Hussein, who murdered many animals, as well as murdering many people that he tortured like animals beforehand.

Yet as I stated earlier, while reasonable conservative minds and liberal minds can disagree about the need to hurl epithets at private citizens, everybody should agree that violent protest is not an acceptable answer.

Liberals key cars. They remove lawn signs. Conservatives in general don’t do this because it would contradict the law and order platform we run on. Liberals are not bound by such constraints because liberals do not believe in constraints to begin with. There are not too many conservative republicans in blue shirts and red neckties out rioting in the street turning over cars and setting them on fire. Conservatives do not spray fur coats, raid animal testing factories and release the animals, or sit in trees and hurl epithets at innocent construction workers trying to do their jobs.

When did the peaceniks on the left become so violent? How can they be enraged at collateral damage in Iraq while harming fellow Americans?

While Laura and Jenna Bush were not harmed, an innocent victim in a wheelchair was not so lucky.

http://www.nypost.com/seven/04242008/news/regionalnews/bush_basher_smashes_disabled_teen__cops_107864.htm

The 22 year old leftist (I am sure none of his college professors taught him anything that led to his lunacy) started screaming at the First Lady and her daughter. A republican couple that had come simply to hear a speech about reading to children told the man to stop yelling. He was shouting obscenities about the Iraq War, and they wanted quiet.

The man responded by repeatedly punching their daughter, an 18 year old girl confined to a wheelchair due to cerebral palsy. As she screamed (in this case she had a right to scream), he punched her shoulder blades and her thighs.

Yes, the leftist nut job was arrested on charges of assault and resisting arrest.

No, that does not settle the matter.

The mainstream media has ignored the story. I read the New York Post because they actually will report stuff like this.

There were no calls from Barack Obama to come together and respect each other. Hillary Clinton did not issue a statement condemning an attack on her “sister,” especially since the perpetrator was one of those “big boys” that Hillary keeps claiming are ganging up on her.

This story got virtually ignored.

I have often compared leftists to Palestinians, because they simply will not recognize that the other side has a fundamental right to exist.

The solution in my mind is to give these leftist wack jobs the equivalent of the “Simpsons” treatment.

In an episode of the Simpsons, Lisa rigged an electric shock device to her cupcakes. Every time Bart would try to steal it, he would get a shock. He then learne dnot to take the cupcakes.

The next time a leftist tries to assault a wheelchair confined woman just for being a republican, electrodes should be hooked up to his extremities. He should be forced to recite the phrase “republicans are human beings.” He should also be required to say “republicans have a right to exist.”

Most likely, the person will allow for republicans, but not conservatives. After a shock, the person will allow for conservatives, but not Bush supporters. After another shock, the person will allow for Bush supporters, as long as they don’t like him now and are against the war.

Finally, at some point, this person will have a mirror thrust in their face. They will look at their electroshocked body and Don King like hair and realize that all they had to do was admit that republicans are human beings and they would be free to go.

I suspect that a healthy plurality of the left, especially the young ones, would opt for death. This is no different than the members of the Klan who would rather die than stand next to a black man, as Senator Robert Byrd used to say, albeit using stronger language.

This crazy man be the extreme, but the problem on the left is that the line keeps moving. Humanity gets blurrier and blurrier as every behavior becomes relative. To quote the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the left has “defined deviancy down.”

Conservatives condemn their lunatics. Liberals embrace theirs, and stay silent when a public embrace might be politically untenable.

Wendy and John Levitro are human beings. Their handicapped daughter Maureen did nothing to deserve the beating she endured.

If this were white against black, Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton would be leading riots.

Yet when a liberal tries to bludgeon a republican to death, even a handicapped one, the melodic sound of chirping crickets is not far behind.

I began blogging to combat ideological bigotry. I will not rest until every liberal makes a pact to take their most hateful and cancerous elements, and get them to stop. They don’t even have to mean it. At least pay some perfunctory lip service.

The poorest and weakest among us are a cause celebre for the left…unless they are republican.

Such is life in a land where those who say violence is not the answer make an exception when it comes to a good old fashioned leftist style Bush bashing session, with the emphasis on bashing.

eric

From Chicago to Atlanta to New York, the Tygrrrr Express is glad to back in Brooklyn.

The fallout from the Presidential race is still being dissected, but my thoughts tonight turn to cold hard numbers.

On a happy note, my favorite number at the moment is 99. That is the age of my grandmother, who I made absolutely sure made it into her bed safely. She turns 100 in less than a month, and the few days I will spend with her are invaluable.

She still wishes there are things that she could do. She was married for 67 years, and when my grandfather died at age 97, she was 94. She had always cooked for me, and walked on her own. The last 6 years have been tougher than the first 94 for her. I kept telling her that I knew how to walk across the street and get my own dinner, but she was always used to handling everything. She worries about one of her children (not my mother thank God) pre-deceasing her, and had to witness one of her 5 grandchildren predecease her at age 42.

She is a tough, strong, smart woman, and just knowing my grandmother was sound asleep in the next room made me feel at peace. Yet that peace is tempered with the reality that numbers are what they are. My grandmother simply cannot play tennis or dance the Charleston anymore. While she has not happy about such realities, she has done what many people do not do. She has accepted her situation, and gracefully prepared for what comes next. To her, what comes next making sure the next generation is prepared to grow.

Life is about growth. We either grow or we die. Yet some people feel that their time is on the verge of passing. It is now or never. Desperation sets in.

This is what I see from Hillary Clinton.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2008/04/24/do2402.xml&posted=true&_requestid=599349

I have never taken a psychology course. I am not a psychoanalyst. Yet as much as I enjoy watching the democrats beat each other’s brains in, a cold detached perspective sees a woman on the verge of collapse. She has locked herself into a viewpoint that if she persists, the world of numbers will cease to exist, and she will be President of the United States.

I have offered many reasons why she should never be President. I have discussed her numerous negative qualities. I have repeatedly stated she cannot govern.

Yet I have never counted her out. I kept saying that she would find a way to win. he would resort to any tactic, and it would work.

I was right about her willingness to try and destroy Barack Obama, but her window for succeeding seems to be closing. She defeated him by 10 points in Pennsylvania, but his pledged delegate lead only shrank from 160 to 145. There are only 9 conests, left, none of them as large as Pennsylvania. The largest remaining contest is North Carolina, which Barack Obama should win in a landslide.

I am not going to tell Hillary to drop out. As a republican, I am comfortable with her ripping the democratic party to shreds. As somebody who simply accepts that 2 + 2 = 4, I do not see Hillary surpassing Obama in the pledged delegate count.

So why continue?

I believe Hillary Clinton believes that something, somehow, will give her the nomination. Yet at what price? How much further should she and her husband enrage many of her past supporters?

Hillary often wrote about the “politics of meaning.” I wonder if she truly can find meaning in her life if she fails in her quest to be President. Al Gore found meaning in raking in millions of dollars and having people tell him they love him. John Kerry? He does not seem to have found much.

Chelsea is all grown up. Bill has his life making speeches. Hillary could focus on being a great senator, but her passion was never to be a Senator. She wanted to lead. She has always had to follow others. This was her turn.

The argument that somebody has paid their dues, and therefore it is their turn, smacks of entitlement. Bob Dole was gift wrapped a nomination for what seemed noting more than it was his turn. What neither of these people failed to do was inspire people.

Bob Dole was a great Senator, but he did not make people rally around him. John McCain inspires people. Barack Obama, for all his flaws, has energized the political process.

Hillary and Dole are technocrats. Michael Dukakis was a technocrat. Technoratic is a polite way of saying boring. President George Herbert Walker Bush once admitted that he lacked the “vision thing,” but the vision thing is important.

Ideology will trump competence because ideology is about passion. People run on competence when they cannot inspire passion. People govern effectively not by managing the bureaucracy, but by motivating people to do what they want. Leadership is not about making people do things. It is about getting them to want to do those things.

Hillary expected a quick primary victory based on name recognition. The fact that she lasted longer than Rudy Giuliani and Joseph Lieberman does not change the fact that when the numbers came in, people wanted somebody they could believe in to reach for the stars and deliver greatness.

Americans put a man on the moon. We won the Cold War and freed millions of people living under Communism. We invented the internet, and created a fledgling democracy that is the envy of the world.

Yet what Americans are most are realists. It is not about what we desire It is about what we can achieve. Ideas can seem farfetched, but if the evidence refuses to tell us that our goals are fantasy, then we persist.

Yet at some point we do decline. We decline healthwise. We become worse at things we used to do with ease. We move slower, think slower, and react slower. Everything around us moves faster.

Hillary Clinton sees her very best chance of being the leader of the free world slipping away. She will claw tooth and nail against all odds in search of a miracle because she know that the consequences of failing is most likely a rapid decline, at least from a political standpoint.

It is a cold reality, but people who run for President and lose are forced to confront the fact that their opinions barely matter more than the average person on the street. Nobody argues that Michael Dukakis is a bad person, but he went from almost being President to teaching at a college. Yes, that is a respectable profession, but it is quite a come down in prestige.

Hillary has more than most people will ever have, but like any hard driving person, falling short will hit her hard. Jon Corzine was fired as the head of Goldman Sachs. He eased his pain by becoming Governor of New Jersey. Richard Nixon bounced back from a tough loss to reach the top 8 years later.

Hillary does not have 8 years. She has maybe 8 weeks.

This is why she will do whatever it takes, regardless of who she hurts. The hourglass is running out of sand, and a life after a failure is not something she would handle well. She is not Fatal Attraction psychotic, but coping with rejection is not her strong suit.

We will know in several weeks, but 80% of traders on intrade are betting on Obama, with only 16% betting on her to win the nomination.

regardless of what anybody thinks about her, her only options at this point are destruction, cheating, or quitting. She will not quit, which makes for an ugly endgame.

She can protest all she likes, but it is about the numbers. They do not add up for her, no matter how hard she tries to manipulate them. She may rail against corporate greed, but she is the political equivalent. The air is out of the balloon, and the numbers cannot dance any more.

eric