Sullivan asks, "Would Clinton Prefer McCain to Obama?"

Andrew Sullivan, one of the country’s more compassionate, earnest commentators, has issued a blistering critique of the new ad produced by HRC’s camp to score some Pennsylvania points on the "Obama-elitist" thing. Sullivan writes of the commercial:

This ad has managed to actually shock me. Yes, me, rabid Clinton-hater, second only to Hitchens in Clinton Derangement Syndrome, proud holder of the view that Senator Clinton is one of the ghastliest examples of pure political cynicism and opportunism in public life, an empty, reverberating shell of a human being, a case study in how power and the search for it do indeed in the end corrupt absolutely [. . . .] This is far too crude even for Karl Rove. It is a parody of a brutal Rove ad. Without batting an eyelid, Clinton effortlessly adopts the entire worldview of the most cynical of Republican operatives and applies it with the delicacy of a shovel to the likely Democratic party nominee. This is a) how desperate she must know feel; b) how utterly irrelevant it is to her what happens in this election unless she is the next Democratic nominee for president.

Okay, so maybe Sullivan's compassion fails to extend to the Clintons. Even so, I think he’s nailed it dead on here.

Sadly, whereas I used to view Hillary as a strong, positive woman with deeply-held convictions about the social good, I now see her as corrosive--due, largely, to her napalm-scented campaigning technique. Where I used to see a woman of character, I now see a woman who, in adapting and applying the smear techniques that the VRWC used against her, her husband and her party, has aligned herself with the ugliest of politicos—the Karl Roves, the Lee Atwaters—in her quest for the presidency.

Is this sexist? No. I the same rules apply to any hardened, cynical, and hyper-partisan politician in the U. S.—and the woman, is partisan. If we elect her, we can anticipate four-to- eight more years of disastrously deadlocked government.