Hillary Gives Up the Election for the Nomination

Voting against the troops will haunt her:

Hillary Clinton may have sealed her fate last week. Revealing the depth of her desperation on Iraq and her innate distrust of the free markets she seems only to have picked up the baggage, but no useful political lessons, from her husband's administration.

Back when Barack Obama was an unknown legislator Hillary cast her vote in favor of authorization for President Bush to use force in Iraq. For a time she seemed to follow the advice of "third way" Democrats that to be credible on the national stage Democrats need to be stalwart on national defense. She resisted pleas to renounce her war vote and refused to call for a timetable for withdrawal.

Then came Obama, not to mention John Edwards and the Democratic Congressional majority. Perhaps spooked by polls showing remarkably high "unfavorable" ratings or by the one ups-manship of dueling anti-war rhetoric of her opponents, she quite frankly lost her nerve.

Unlike her colleague Joe Biden, who refused the entreaties of the Left, she and 13 of her colleagues voted against funding for the troops. Carl Levin, who seems to have stolen her "responsibility gene," voted for the measure and declared: "I don't want to send a message that we are not going to provide funding for the troops." Not Hillary. Should she survive the primaries she will now be in precisely the same position as John Kerry: she was for the War before she was against it and against withdrawal deadlines before she was for them. How quickly they forget.

She needs to remember that if she gets the Dem nod she won't be running against the hated Bush. She doesn't have the slickness of her worse half.