Stumped Nails It

In Hillary Clinton, GOP Heroine Andres Martinez, nails it:

Clinton is a capable woman who'd make a credible presidential candidate in her own right. But she is not here in her own right. She is cashing in on her husband's brand. She didn't become a senator just because she is hard-working and smart and talented. She also became a senator (in an adopted home state, no less) because she was the president's wife -- and not just the president's wife but the president's aggrieved wife, able to draw on a reservoir of good will and sympathy. How her ascent advances the meritocratic cause of women is beyond me.

We all know this, and yet the Clintons ask us to deny it. They also ask that we accept the notion that a term and a third in the U.S. Senate is plenty of experience, while two-thirds of a term is woefully lacking. There have been plenty of other conceits we have been asked to accept along the way, including that one about how you could innocently "remember" coming under sniper fire when you never had.

This was Hillary Clinton's nomination to lose. And if she had won it as expected, none of this would be worth revisiting -- the voters would have spoken, and the nomination would be rightfully hers. But she failed to win it. Obama won't win either, at least not on the basis of pledged delegates, but he is ahead both in the delegate and popular count, and has wildly surpassed expectations.