ObstiNancy

The spectacle of two sexagenarian women slugging it out isn’t something anyone should see, and isn’t something you do see outside of two grandmothers in fisticuffs over the last $19.99 Fry Daddy at a Des Moines Wal-Mart.

Unless of course it’s Election 2008. We’re getting close to the gloves coming off between Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and mathematical longshot Presidential aspirant Hillary Clinton and it’s only a matter of time before they’re duking it out like Madame Speaker cut the Senator off for the only open parking space at Krispy Kreme.

In the latest edition of “Honestly, This Is Getting Embarrassing”, Hillary Clinton’s lead fundraisers, with the tacit blessing of Mrs. Clinton’s team (and ostensibly The Candidate herself) have taken the time off from funding Hillary’s campaign to take a fire axe to the Democratic party to rattle off a thinly-veiled threat to Congresswoman Pelosi to keep her puckery, bug-eyed, zombie Mary Tyler Moore face out of the superdelegate fight and leave the arm-twisting to the big boys in the Clinton camp.

Of the letter, Clinton campaign spokesman Phil Singer claims “we didn’t know what was in it” but Clinton aides chimed in cryptically that “the letter speaks for itself.”

“There is clearly a broad feeling among many Democrats and many people who are active in the party,” said Singer, “that the role of superdelegates is to exercise independent judgment and make a decision that is best for the party and best for the country.” (Much like Governor Bill Richardson who pledged his support to Barack Obama and was promptly branded “Judas” by the Clinton team’s James Carville, who refused to apologize and even added, “A cattle rancher in eastern New Mexico or an advertising executive on the East Side of Manhattan would agree that proper branding is important. I wanted to be sure that Richardson’s act was branded properly.”)

Singer and the Clinton campaign, with the trigger-fingers of their fundraising surrogates, are taking aim at Speaker Pelosi for having the temerity to suggest that superdelegates “have an obligation to support the candidate who leads in the pledged delegate count as of June 3rd”.

The 20 donors who signed the letter have, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, donated nearly $24 million to Democratic campaigns over the last ten years. They were sure to make certain that the weight of their wallets didn’t escape the Speaker. “We have been strong supporters of the DCCC,” they wrote. “We therefore urge you to clarify your position on super-delegates and reflect in your comments a more open view to the optional independent actions of each of the delegates at the National Convention in August.”

Or else. The Clintons’ extended Corleone Family of supporters have spoken: Nancy needs to fall in line or the Democratic Speaker with the razor-thin House majority is going to wake up with a bisected donkey in her bed.

Speaker Pelosi is 10 different kinds of wuss on going after any appearance of malfeasance within the Bush Administration, but don’t plan on Nancy backing down on this one. This is no less than the future of the Democratic party at stake, and it’s becoming increasingly obvious that the Clintons are the past. It doesn’t have to be that way, but they’ve reached a level of entitlement that insists that if they can’t lead the party then no one should, and for that, they need to be cut off at the knees. Nancy Pelosi’s elevation to the first female Speaker of the House was historic, and she doesn’t want to go down in history again as a one-term washout. Without the party’s future, there’s no future for her, and she’s not ready to go back to sitting on a backbench to a McCain Administration and another all-too-familiar Republican Congress.

So, unseemly or not, get ready for senior women throwing down.