The Anchoress presents a dialogue about a desperate Democrat:
Don Clinton: Oh, get yourself a hankie, Candace, and stop bleedin’ all over my rug. The more you whine and cry the more that li’l Alaskan hootchi-goo is gonna laugh while she grinds the stiletto heel of those cute little size sevens straight through your pericardium and into your heart before you even know what’s happened!
The One: (falls to the floor in contrite supplication) Help me, Godfather, help me! What do I do? How do I get this mean girl to stop beating me up, and reclaim my glamor, my “it” factor? My minions in the press have been going after her with everything they have, and they’re getting booed! Next “I” might get booed, oh, what do I do –
Don Clinton: (leaps from his chair and smacks The One twice on the face, smack! smack!) You can be a man! Be a man!
The One: (pathetic) I don’t know how. I just… don’t know how.
Obama is melting down quickly, but he didn’t melt down quickly enough for the Clintonistas to attempt the revolution in Denver they were considering. Obama badly needs to shake things up before he tanks completely, but he doesn’t have the courage to face down his wife and do the only thing that might save his candidacy, which is replacing Biden with Hillary. (Seriously, who is he going to upset in the slightest by that move, the influential Delaware wing of the Democratic party? The Neil Kinnock fan club?) Even that probably won’t work now anyway, since what would have looked like an act of strength and magnanimity a few weeks ago would now be correctly seen as an act of supreme weakness and desperation. But if he goes down 20 with likely voters, he may as well give it a whirl.
As I wrote around the time of the final primaries, Obama was very foolish to grab for the brass ring instead of ascending to secular sainthood that was his for the taking by graciously gifting the nomination to Hillary and then condescending to accept the vice-presidency. That’s the sort of Olympian, above-the-fray role he was born to play, not straight-up street-fighting against a devious old aviator and an Alaskan she-barracuda. If he loses as badly in November as is beginning to look possible, he’s probably one-and-done on the national scene.