Published on FOXNews.com on May 8, 2008.

Bill and Hillary Clinton have always believed that they’re very different than the rest of us. Over their more than 30 years in politics together, they’ve learned one important and consistent lesson: that rules don’t matter. Rules don’t apply to them. Rules are for other people. Rules can be bent, changed, manipulated.

And that philosophy has worked very well for them.

So it’s particularly ironic that they are now turning to the Democratic Party Rules Committee to try and steal the presidential nomination that Hillary has already definitively lost to Barack Obama in the popular vote, the delegate count, and the total number of states.

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Published on TheHill.com on May 8, 2008.

OK, so Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) is staying in the presidential race despite losing among elected delegates, facing a slimming lead among superdelegates, losing the popular vote and behind by 2-to-1 in the number of states carried. She slogs on, hoping against hope for a sudden turnaround in the race.

Apart from the psychological reasons for her stubbornness, is there a more subtle political calculation going on?

Is she continuing her race so as to have a platform from which to continue to bash Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) in the hopes of so damaging him that he can’t win the general election? Is she doing this to keep her options alive for the 2012 presidential race?

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Published in the New York Post on May 7, 2008.

She lost hard in North Carolina, and barely held on to win Indiana. Hillary Clinton just doesn’t have enough straws left to clutch. The best (or worst) she can hope to do the rest of the way is bloody Barack Obama enough to make him lose in the fall, allowing her to come back in 2012.

In fact, Obama basically clinched the nomination with his string of 11 straight primary and caucus wins in February, many by wipe-out margins - giving him a lead in elected delegates that Clinton couldn’t hope to close, especially given the nutty proportional-representation rules that govern the Democratic Party.

Do the math. Last night’s results leave him with a lead among elected delegates of 150 or so, and among all delegates of around 130.

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Hillary’s attempt to cast herself as a blue collar girl is as phony as any of her reinventions and voters realize it. Contrary to her belief, we are not morons. We know that she has had child care at her beck and call, along with a full staff of servants as she reared Chelsea first in the Arkansas Governors’ Mansion and then in the White House. She’s no working Mom. But it serves her purpose to portray herself in that light so as to give voters who are turned off by Rev. Wright and worried about Obama an excuse to vote for her. Her posturing as something she is not — a redneck girl — makes it OK to vote for her even if the motivation is not affection for Hillary but fear of Obama.

Published on FOXNews.com on May 2, 2008.

Bill O’Reilly asked Hillary Clinton the key question about the war in Iraq: What happens if we pull out and the Iranians move in? She talked around the issue, but never gave a convincing answer to O’Reilly’s question. She said she would replace force with diplomacy. But, as Frederick the Great said, “Diplomacy without force is like music without instruments.” If our troops are long gone from Iraq, the Iranians will snub our diplomacy and laugh at our entireties. They will add Iraq to their other trophies in the region: Syria, Lebanon and Gaza.

Hillary’s inability to answer O’Reilly’s question reveals a larger flaw in the Democratic arguments as the election approaches. Obama will be the Democratic nominee (take that to the bank). How will the Iraq War play in the race? On the surface, it would appear to be a disaster for the Republicans. With American deaths now over the 4,000 mark and the seriously wounded at around 15,000, we are sick and tired of this war. It has destroyed George W. Bush and could well do the same to John McCain.

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Published on TheHill.com on April 29, 2008.

At the start of his campaign, Obama ran in counterpoint to the previous candidacies of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. Here was a black man running for president on issues that had nothing to do with race as he rose above the victimization rhetoric that characterizes so many speeches of African-American political figures.

Now, in attacking the Rev. Wright as he did Tuesday, Obama can further define himself in contrast to Wright, just as he did earlier vis-à-vis Jackson and Sharpton.

So if, as the Chinese ideogram suggests, crisis is a synthesis of danger and opportunity, the controversy surrounding the Rev. Jeremiah Wright presents plenty of both for Obama.

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Published on FOXNews.com on April 25, 2008.

Does Hillary Clinton really believe she can overtake Barack Obama among elected delegates? No way. The math is dead against her and she’s a realist. Even after Pennsylvania, Obama still leads by more than 140 in elected delegates. They’ll likely break even in Indiana and he’ll win North Carolina where one third of the vote is African-American. After that? If she wins Kentucky, West Virginia, and Puerto Rico by 15 points and they break about even in Guam, North Dakota, Montana, and Oregon, she’ll still trail him by at least 130 votes among elected delegates.

Does she believe she can persuade super delegates to vote for her? Again, probably not. Obama has steadily eroded her edge among super delegates and now they are almost tied among committed super delegates. And the prevailing sentiment among those that remain is not to overturn the will of the voters.

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Published on TheHill.com on April 23, 2008.

Sports metaphors are trite and too male-oriented, but sometimes they are so apt they are unavoidable.

The Clinton-Obama contest is like a 15-round heavyweight title bout in boxing.

Hillary went for an early knockout. All previous Democratic races since 1960 have been decided that way, with one candidate winning decisive primaries, forcing his opponents to withdraw. But Obama beat her to the punch in Iowa, survived a loss in New Hampshire, and countered her sweep of New York, New Jersey and California on Super Tuesday by winning a large number of smaller states, largely by out-organizing Hillary in caucus states. While most traditional candidates are forced out if they lose key states because their money dries up, Obama’s ingenious use of Internet funding provided him with an ample financial base even as he fell behind Hillary in the delegate count.

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