Frank Rich Gores Hillary Clinton

I thought that Frank Rich made some interesting points about the YouTube political generation in his latest column, yet I'm disappointed to see that he thinks it's Hillary Clinton who will suffer most from what he sees as a new brand of politics. His critique of her Bosnia-story mistake is reminiscent of what Mr. Rich and Maureen Dowd did to Al Gore in 2000, which was to look (or to be) clever by creating this lasting media caricature of Mr. Gore as a foolish braggart while we got Bush in the White House for eight years. So much for the "inevitability" of the not-so-different politics of 2000.

They're doing it again.
Hillary is being Gored.

Politics may have become more hip, but politicians certainly haven't. Here's my biggest fear: Hillary Clinton will be harmed irreparably, as Gore was harmed, from the hip/mocking media and late night talk shows over something relatively trivial..and that will politically advance Obama and McCain...and there will be a heck of a lot more hip/modern-techno-political damage done to Obama with the Reverend Wright issue from the Right (yeah, they know how to use YouTube, too) than I think any journalist whose center of the universe is Manhattan could understand right now.

Recent polls with limited and temporal glimpses into who-knows-whose minds aren't your Uncle Larry or your cousin Susie-May or old square Bill and Betty from Fumbuck. The Reverend Wright issue is like a tornado that left as quickly as it came. People outside the storm's path will see it on the news and forget about it quickly, but for those who were directly shaken, the storm's mark will permanently remain. There a a lot of average Americans who are not racist by extremist standards who just can't shake the words "God-damn America" out of their minds. The Right's going to play with this like a Red, White, and Blue bouncing ball in their padded room of 527 delight.

The polls also fail to reflect the Hillary-supporters who I see becoming more and more disillusioned with their party by the day. They see her trashed in the media and by the decidely nasty young-bloods in the Democratic party [a bitter division of the netroots at the once-productive Daily Kos is only a symptom of a greater illness within the party].

They're seeing self-interested politicos like Pat Leahy trying to cut off small-d democracy, which is totally antithetical to the idea of the big-D philosophy of fairness and justice. It's all too reminiscent of Florida 2000, but this time it's due to the dysfunction of the party itself. We can't even blame the Republicans for this one!

I think of the daughters who are coming of age..the ones who are pulling for Hillary..hoping to see the first female President... and only seeing how the old boys still think they can play (and win) the game. To use dated commercial jargon, I've come a long way myself, baby...and I have to say that, for all my years of observing politics, there are a lot of boys out there who still like to play games to maintain the integrity of that precious glass ceiling of theirs.

I have this nagging feeling about what's likely in store for us Democrats in this YouTube generation of politics. I think it's all about to backfire on us as we prepare for the General Election. For whatever reason. I think that many Democratic strategists are snatching division and chaos from the once-easy-flowing river of victory.

Some of my readers won't like what I'm saying here..they won't like it at all... but I'll be perfectly willing to meet them back here at this blogpost in six months and we'll revisit my current opinion, which has been borne of tough love. I think we shouldn't fool ourselves into thinking Hillary's character is weak any more than Al Gore's character was weak...whether or not people can play rotten and underhanded tricks on YouTube.