The Dish

Hilzoy writes:

People are writing about [Clinton] as though she were a bomb that needed to be expertly defused, as opposed to a person who can govern her own life, and is responsible for her own choices. I am aware that it must be hard to face the fact that you’ve lost. But it became clear that she was not going to win the nomination months ago — I would say after Wisconsin, but certainly after Texas. Moreover, this is not unprecedented. People lose the nomination every four years. Most of the time, they do not stay on until it is mathematically impossible for them to win; they leave when it has become clear that they will not win. They do not complain about disenfranchising all the states with later primaries, they do not threaten to keep their supporters home, and they certainly do not threaten "open civil war" if they don’t get nominated for Vice President. On those rare occasions when some candidate does this in the absence of some truly monumental issue, we normally think that that candidate is a narcissistic and unprincipled person who has just shown why s/he should never, ever be President.

There is absolutely no reason not to apply these same standards to Hillary Clinton.

Right now, instead of floating demands in the press and comparing herself to abolitionists and suffragists, she could be telling her supporters that she lost fair and square; that while there was a lot of sexism in the campaign, there was racism as well, and that sexism does not explain why a candidate with literally every institutional advantage over her opponent lost the nomination. She could be reaching out to the voters who supported her in places where Obama has had trouble, and urging them to vote for him. She could, in a word, be doing the right thing: trying to earn that respect she seems to want.

Instead, she’s throwing tantrums, making demands that she has no right to make, and threatening civil war.

I can’t imagine a better demonstration of why she should not be President or Vice President. Nor can I imagine a better demonstration of why some of us who are committed feminists are not happy with her as our standard-bearer. She lost. It happens. If she were an adult or a professional, she would deal with it. Apparently, she is neither.

Ann Althouse, seconded by the Passive-Aggressive one, poo-pooed the notion that the Clintons are sociopaths in their Florida and Michigan grandstanding. They’re just being lawyers – preparing to litigate. There is one obvious problem with that argument, as a reader explains:

Althouse is right to an extent.  Often in ligitation, if the rules help you, they are iron clad, and if they don’t, you look for reasons why they shouldn’t apply. But that’s not what’s going on here.To use the ligitation analogy, if you walk in to court espousing the exact opposite position of an earlier stated position, you lose, plain and simple.  Your opponent calls it an admission, throws it in your face, and probably moves for sanctions.  The judge accepts the earlier position as the truth and the later position an obvious attempt to impose a different standard of liability than what everyone agreed to before the litigation (or at an earlier point in the litigation). Worst of all, you lose all credibility with the judge, which any litigator will tell you is the most important weapon in your arsenal. By Ann’s analogy, Clinton loses (and gets sanctioned).

Lord knows I’d like to litigate that case.

Rauch’s "modest proposal" from the Atlantic archives:

It seems to me that the only honest and effective way to confront this issue is to tax not fattening foods or fattening companies but fat people. It is they, after all, who drive up the government’s health-care costs, so it is they who should pay. What I propose, then, is to tax people by the pound.

This needn’t be very complicated.

Fat-tax rates would be set by a National Avoirdupois Governing System (NAGS). To hit the worst offenders the hardest, the tax could be graduated. People would pay one per-pound rate above the "overweight" threshold, and a stiffer rate above the "obese" threshold. Fat people might not like this tax, but of course they could avoid it by becoming thinner.

In fact, I might go further. Carrots often work even better than sticks, so I propose a skinny subsidy to complement the fat tax. People who maintain trim, firm physiques should be rewarded for their public-spiritedness with large tax credits—funded, of course, by the fat tax.

My plan would address the nation’s fat epidemic equitably and efficiently. It would make Americans put their money where their mouths are. And did I mention that I weigh 135 pounds?

The six most commonly quoted bogus statistics.

Weigel reports from the Libertarian convention:

"I want us to broaden the base," says one Texas delegate and reform caucus stalwart. "I’ve been a Ruwart fan for a long time but she can’t do that. But Barr can get 3 to 5 percent of the vote and make McCain rue the day he stopped being a conservative."

It appears Tucker isn’t going to make a run after all. Bummer.

A match made in India, Indonesia … and America.

Jeff Buckley’s haunting cover can be seen and heard here. k.d. lang’s is here.

A reader notes:

I think the Obama campaign has chosen wisely the past week or so, to let Senator Clinton "implode" on her own. And it’s obviously beginning to happen. Senator Obama and his campaign have been very hands-off lately with the Clinton campaign, instead focusing their energy on McCain and not letting him or his campaign get away with baseless attacks. So far, he has responded with force, dignity, intelligence, and calmness, and turned from defense to offense admirably and fairly. He is looking more and more presidential every day, and Senator Clinton is looking less so each day. I think the Obama campaign statement today was perfect: it didn’t use Wolfson-like venom, but simply used the words "unfortunate" and "has no place in this campaign". Laser-like precision!

A father mourns the loss of his daughter who died along with 127 other students at the Fuxin Primary school May 23, 2008 in Wufu, Sichuan province, China. Nearly 7,000 classrooms collapsed in the earthquake last week, killing thousands of students. You can donate here. By Paula Bronstein/Getty Images.

A reader hopes:

I’m a Democrat, an Obama supporter who would gladly have pulled the lever for Clinton if she had won the nomination (which she did not).  And until this afternoon, I even would have accepted her as Obama’s veep.  But after that idiotic statement about Bobby Kennedy, no more.  I say that not because the statement is offensive (which it is), but because it is so monumentally tone deaf. 

If she was trying to bolster her own case, she failed miserably.  If she was trying to live up to every negative image that you or other Hilary-adversaries could gin up in your most hallucinatory fever dreams, well, mission accomplished.  And I for one am tired of Dem presidential candidates who seem most skilled at rhetorically shooting themselves in the foot.  Hopefully this gaffe will continue the rolling of superdelegates away from her camp, and end this parade of ignominy.

For the record, I think she meant it as a reference that people would remember about a June primary. She’s not crazy enough to air wishes about Obama’s early demise. But her actual point is nonetheless fallacious because a) that 1968 primary campaign did not last six months as this one has; b) Johnson’s withdrawal scrambled the race in ways not applicable today. And 1992 doesn’t help her case either. In short: wrong, dumb and unintentionally offensive, especially to already alienated African-Americans and to a Kennedy family still reeling from Ted’s illness.