So long, Hillary - Good riddance to the Clinton's

I’ve had an independent streak my whole life. My first election was in 1980. I went to the polling place with my father and voted for Independent candidate John Anderson, then we went to Brigham’s for Lime Rickeys. Nobody looked at me funny, despite the fact that I was in elementary school at the time.

In my first real election, I voted for Bill Clinton. I was sure President Bush’s “New World Order” was going to get me drafted so I ignored the rumors about Clinton’s “appetites,” though I shouldn’t have (the stories of skirt-chasing foreshadowed him showing little Bubba to Monica Lewinsky in the Oval Office). I voted for him again in ‘96, but remained a registered Independent. The Democratic party just isn’t big enough for me and a President who doesn’t have the common sense to know that an intern who would show him her thong is too crazy to be anywhere near the White House.

Thankfully, their 16-year lease on the party is up and the Clinton brand is as dead as Arthur Andersen Accounting. This election will not be a referendum on Bill Clinton despite he and his wife’s best efforts. They figured there was enough brand loyalty inside the Democratic party to allow her to coast to victory, but don’t get it twisted - most of her supporters were voting for the “Clinton” in her name, not the “Hillary.” They either forgot or blocked out the fact that the Lewinsky episode made the Clinton name so toxic that Al Gore couldn’t say it out loud during the 2000 campaign.

Hillary’s gone back to the bottom of the totem pole in the Senate where she belongs as a carpetbagging second-term junior Senator. But unlike what she did when her husband publicly disgraced their family in front of the entire world, I’m not giving her a pass for the way she ran her campaign – or her authorizing the invasion of Iraq.

She never considered the possibility that she wouldn’t be the Democratic nominee and she had no post-February 5th strategy because she assumed the race would be over by then. She thought Democrats all over the country were sitting around waiting for their chance to vote for her, and she would ride a wave of wins from Iowa to the convention. Imagine her surprise when she not only didn’t win Iowa, but came in an embarrassing third place. She must have been desperate when Barack opened up a ten-point lead in New Hampshire days later. It was supposed to be her “firewall” state, but it took the water of her own tears (and $5 million of her own dollars) for her to squeak out a 7,600-vote win.

She had to know that if Bill Richardson had dropped out of the race before New Hampshire instead of after, Barack would have gotten enough votes to finish her off. If she didn’t know it then, she had to know it after he won 23-of-34 contests in February; because there she was on February 21st “absolutely honored” to be on stage with our next President.

Then something changed. She thought a win in Ohio would revive her campaign, so she decided to get tough and throw everything but the “kitchen sink” at him. She leaked pictures of him in African garb to Drudge and wouldn’t unequivocally say he wasn’t a Muslim on “60 Minutes.” She praised John McCain’s experience and compared Barack’s to George W. Bush’s. She angrily said “shame on you, Barack Obama” over a healthcare mailer, though in five years she never found the toughness to make the same statement to the President over Iraq. And it almost worked.

She won the battle of Ohio, but lost the war for public opinion. By May, the media was saying out loud what she’s known since January: Barack Obama will be the Democratic nominee. She was forgiven for breaking the first rule of primary politics (don’t give the other side anything to use in the general election) and the only question was what is it going to take for her to get out and endorse him? When she said, “I will be making no decisions tonight,” in her non-concession speech last Tuesday, that was the last straw. It took the entire New York delegation and a secret meeting with Barack at Dianne Feinstein’s house to get one simple message through her thick skull: THIS ISN’T ABOUT YOU!

She’s gone now, thank God, and the story has a happy ending for everyone. When her Senate career is over in 2012, she can retire to Chappaqua with hundreds of millions of dollars to keep her company. Bill can get back on Ron Burkle’s jet and fly off into the sunset with Gina Gershon or Eleanor Mondale, and with the party firmly in the hands of President Barack Obama, I can finally register as a Democrat. If only there was a Brigham’s in Santa Monica, I’d celebrate with a Lime Rickey.