Last night we witnessed a 90-minute confirmation of this coming Tuesday's superfluousness; that, and the culmination of months of strategic impotence, tactical confusion and manifest frustration.
The only creative challenge successfully surmounted by the Clinton campaign these days lies in the number of ways it is finding to spell, "I-t'-s o-v-e-r." One of its strategists busies himself with public fantasies about the imminence of "locking this nomination down," its communications director has taken to screaming at rather than communicating to reporters, and other spokesmen are finally and openly sharing their pain and venting their "anger."
Then comes the big night -- the big 20th debate night -- and the candidate herself adds to the already superfluous confirmation of organizational meltdown.
"Can I just point out that in the last several debates, I seem to get the first question all the time?" And that was the coherent part of Hillary's paranoid oddity. Poor Dennis Kucinich had to elbow his way to questions, which were once universally believed to be opportunities in a debate, but oh how unremitting fire can change one's outlook about the glory of battle.
Mrs. Clinton fared reasonably well on the healthcare and Nafta controversies, but those committed 30 minutes among the 90 just weren't enough to smother the strikingly intrusive impotence, confusion and frustration. Her other responses did far more harm -- and on occasion even raised more questions -- than good.
The camera wasn't panning the audience when Tim Russert asked Hillary about releasing her tax returns, so that voters could learn if that $5 million loan to herself was or was not a backdoor breach of campaign finance laws, but every viewer could feel the audience's tension and incredulity. "The American people who support me are bankrolling my campaign. That's obvious," she said, in defiance of the profoundly obvious.
Tim continued, perhaps by Tuesday? Just to put this matter to bed? "Well, I can't get it together by then," said Mrs. Clinton, to what I thought were audible groans. And regarding the doppelganger question of releasing all her first-lady records, which are, after all, public records? Oh dear, that's such a "cumbersome process," she said. But sure, Tim, you got it -- another empty pledge to try.
As for the thrusts, pokes and distractions of her attacks, they fizzled and soured the second Obama opened his mouth in polite but formidable defense. Encountering her charge of his having disseminated "false, misleading and discredited information" on her healthcare plan, Obama calmly countered that "Senator Clinton has, in her campaign at least, has constantly sent out negative attacks on us ... and we haven't whined about it, because I understand that's the nature of this campaign." More than a smackdown, it was a shutdown, weighted with stones and the first casting thereof.
On the matter of Louis Farrakhan's unsolicited endorsement of Obama, things became downright comical. Here, Mrs. Clinton decided to play not the politician, but Peter Mark Roget. She would "reject" the scoundrel, whereas Obama would merely "denounce" him. And, for you word mavens out there, let it be known there's a vast and prodigious "difference between denouncing and rejecting," Clinton instructed.
Hopelessly inarticulate as he is, Obama amusedly protested that he failed to "see a difference between denouncing and rejecting," but hey, he was happy to couple his denunciation with a little rejection, if that, indeed, would make Mrs. Clinton happy. (It did not.)
On the broader issue raised of speeches over specific solutions -- hence executive judgment -- Hillary's impotence boomeranged almost violently.
"My objections to the war in Iraq were not simply a speech," retorted Obama in his most -- in fact only -- animated moment. "I was one of the most vocal opponents of the war, and I was very specific as to why."
"The fact was," he continued with withering, debate-ending vehemence, "this was a big strategic blunder." And another "fact is that Senator Clinton often says that she is ready on Day One, but, in [further] fact, she was ready to give in to George Bush on Day One on this critical issue -- in [yet further] fact, she facilitated and enabled this individual to make a decision that has been strategically damaging to the United States of America."
To that, there was and remains simply no rational comeback. Political historians will someday write, I am certain, that that rational absence was what vacated Hillary's nomination hopes from the beginning. The seedling virus was always there; it just needed time to grow and take malignant root throughout the base.
We will of course see you again in Texas and Ohio, Hillary, but till then and forever after, goodbye.