Dkos diary, 12/17/06: How Hillary Could Destroy the Democratic Party

The Democrats face crisis directly ahead, brought to you by the Senator from New York. And as the New England Patriots’ fullback Heath Evans said about something else over the weekend, this could get ugly real quick.

‘Tis the Hamiltonian curse that like the Dixie Chicks’ Queen of Whatever, many people today are not from actual places but from economic zones. They hesitate or have to think about it for a minute when you ask them where they are from. Or ask an advisor. Such is the fate of the Senator from New York. The Mr. Potato Head treatment doesn’t help. No matter how much her army of handlers dress her up, change her hair, change her name, send her bewildered to a Yankees game the one day and present her as a bible thumpin’, flag lovin’ Midwestern patriot the next, she never seems to actually be from someplace.

She is exclusively from her generation and her generation’s Clinton thing borders on Personality Cult. But most people know where she is not from: She is not from the red states. Nothing has done more to alienate traditionally Democratic voters across the South and the Midwest than the arrival of the Clintons on the political scene. When President Clinton, in one of the first, major symbolic act of his Presidency, kept Air Force One waiting on the tarmac two hours for a Hollywood haircut that cost more than a second-hand truck in most parts of the South, my neighbors in the hills of North Carolina began looking for a fight - they started openly carrying Glocks and crossing Rottweilers.

Since her famed undergraduate days in the heady Sixties, Senator Clinton has always been a one-issue candidate and that issue has always been: Hillary for President. And that is presenting a problem for the Democrats today. Elvis won’t leave the building. He and his wife were raising money all over the country in the run up to ’06 while Fighting Dems fresh from combat in Iraq were pulling out of local races because they couldn’t find cash. The honest, hard-working and legitimate Presidential candidate Evan Bayh suffered the same fate over the weekend.

It is unfortunate that she even considers herself a New Yorker. She lacks that authentic “one of us” quality of real New Yorkers like Norman Mailer, Jimmy Breslin and Nora Ephron. But there are still New Yorkers who know how to find their way on the A train at 14^th St. to the D train to Bensonhurst without getting shot and one of them is the mayor, Mike Bloomberg. “A great, visionary mayor,” says Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff in a cover story in New York Magazine this month. “There’s just no question,” says the investor Steve Rattner, “that he is the greatest mayor of New York since Fiorella La Guardia.” His approval numbers, which hovered around 70% for most of the past year, would suggest so.

The New York article reports that Bloomberg is serious about running for President in 2008. But he asks, “What chance does a five-foot-seven billionaire Jew who’s divorced really have of becoming President?”

Every chance, as his imagination is as vast as his cash flow.

Bloomberg senses that if Senator Clinton runs it will mark a descent into mayhem and irresponsibility on behalf of the Democrats. He said long ago that he would put up a half billion of his own money to start a third Independent Party if the Democrats send up someone “unelectable.” But it appears that the Democrats, or some of them, are hell bent on doing so.

It is the same impulse of "irrational exuberance" which calls forth Senator Clinton that sent this same generation to invest in undercapitalized but trendy DOT.com stocks in the salad days of the Clinton Administration. Silicon Valley was sure to be the Yuppie nirvana before the crash. The Hillary Phenomenon is a political manifestation of this same, apparently inherent, immature and unchecked yearning.

Nature calls Bloomberg forth, and he is a right honorable American, even a patriot, to come forth. But a third party will bring disaster to our country today. If a competent guy like Bloomberg runs it will divide the votes in '08 into three parts and the election will be thrown into the House. Bloomberg has no support in the House. As the House is controlled by Democrats as per the November election, the House will give it to Hillary. With Hillary as President with only 33% of the vote, the red states will buck, and rightly so. Still, these modern-day Whigs continue to spiral out of control, self-celebrating their way to historical oblivion.

The South will not tolerate governance by a Clinton with only 33% of the vote and one considered by many to be a Bitch on Wheels, Chopped and Channeled, Rolled and Pleated with Lakers and Moon Disks. Richard Viguerie of the Christian Coalition and Michael Hill of The League of the South could call for a Constitutional Convention – Robert Novak has already reported rumors of a Constitutional Convention.

It must be remembered that the Democrats have lost three Presidential races forty plus-to one since WW II - to Eisenhower, to Nixon and to Reagan. One more such catastrophic failure and the party with be over for good. And if the South and the mid states wanted to secede today, who would stop them? Hillary Clinton?