Combusti-Bill

Dale Carnegie was no where to be found near the Clinton Campaign this past weekend when Bill Clinton lost his nut at a meeting of California superdelegates and put his finger in the face of a Hillary supporter who said she regretted hearing that James Carville called Bill Richardson “Judas” for his recent endorsement of Barack Obama.

“Five times he told me to my face that he wouldn’t do that,” Clinton spat, red-faced and wagging a finger at the unfortunate woman.

The outburst was reported by San Francisco Chronicle reporters Phillip Matier and Andrew Ross. “It was like someone pulled the pin from a grenade,” they wrote, when Clinton supporter Rachel Binah made her “sorry” comment to the former President in reference to Carville denunciation of the longtime Clinton associate and New Mexico Governor.

“It was one of the worst political meetings I have ever attended,” they quoted one superdelegate as saying.

Well, of course it was. You’re a superdelegate, and you want to be wooed, I would think. You don’t want the candidate’s husband blowing a gasket and launching into a tirade about how unfair the media has been to the campaign, and berating some poor superdelegate who just wanted a photo op with the last Democrat President and a man who is, or was until a few weeks ago, one of the biggest stars in the political firmament. That’s like being ten and waiting for two hours with your pen and program outside the Patriots locker room, only to have Tom Brady tell you to go fuck yourself on his way to his Escalade.

Lordy, is this how we’re going to sway the superdelegates? I think a more finessed approach would have had more to recommend it. You know, the old more-flies-with-honey-than-vinegar thing.

This isn’t a campaign that’s thinking rationally, though. The misery and frustration are reaching a boil in the Clinton camp as they desperately try and find one shred of hope and any shot of grabbing the nomination, even if they have to wrest it from the party’s cold, dead hands.

We’ve passed a tipping point and we’re reaching the point of comeuppence. Even in a party as exoskeletal as the current crop of Democrats, there’s a line forming of people filling pillow cases with full soda cans ready to jump the Clintons and dispense a little street justice if they insist on going a day past the Puerto Rico primary perpetuating this madness. Hillary is threatening to take this to the convention, but they’re not going to survive that long. Every proclamation Hillary makes of seeing this through to the end is the sound of the Clinton Legacy dying a death by a thousand self-inflicted paper cuts. The only “end” is going to be Hillary’s Senate career and Bill in his role as the elder statesman that he’s so earnestly cultivated. That’s the only leverage that the woefully-unequipped Howard Dean still holds. Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid have both stepped up and said that this needs to be settled, the defection of the superdelegates is continuing apace. and Hillary is getting booed in what used to be friendly venues.

The Clintons have made a valid case for letting the people decide this election, and Barack Obama has pretended that he’s all in favor of settling this at the ballot box. That’s all well and good, but for the most part it’s already been settled. Hillary is mathematically incapable of winning this nomination, unless they raise enough money to buy a yacht for every superdelegate or if she can promise as President that she can increase ambassadorships to Malta by 20,000%.

The Clinton Era of Invincibility is over, we can only hope. Barack raised $40 million in March and is outspending Hillary 5 to 1 in Pennsylvania ad buys, while the Clintons are having to give plasma and take soda bottles back to the store to keep the lights on. And it’s starting to show in the polls. The powers-that-be in the Democratic party are going to exercise what little power they’re willing to exercise and put an end to the Clintons’ Pacific Heights-like wreck-the-house squatting that they’ve been doing with the party. And it can’t come soon enough.