Legal Commentary

Maureen Dowd, assuming Obama will lose because he didn't pick Hillary, pictures the great Hillary-Palin presidential debate in 2012.

PALIN: I?ve got a little news flash for you, Hillary. Your night-shift, blue-collar-waitress, boilermaker routine didn?t fool me. It?s in your polls but it?s in my D.N.A. I?ve actually been up at 3 a.m. ? gutting moose. While you got to go to your snooty Wellesley, I had to switch colleges six times in six years. While you got to go to Yale Law, I had to enter beauty contests and turn my back to judges in a bathing suit to get scholarship money.

CLINTON: I?ve got a little news flash for you, Annie Oakley. Dinosaurs disappeared a lot longer than 4,000 years ago. I admit you?ve had a profound influence on America, and I?m not just talking about all the women wearing up-dos and rimless titanium $375 Kazuo Kawasaki designer frames. You and John are now at war with four countries ? Russia, Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan, even as Osama bin Laden has opened a storefront in a strip mall in Pakistan to make TV ads.

Does Dowd's comic vision of the 2012 debate amuse you? Maybe not, but I think the picture Hillary versus Sarah in 2012 is compelling. That could happen.

Meanwhile, we have the little preview of that scenario as Obama attempts to dispatch Hillary as his female surrogate to attack Palin, which is a dubious strategy. Will Hillary fight for Obama with enough vigor to make Democrats believe she's the one to go up against Vice President Palin in 2012? Maybe she'll fight harder for Obama if she thinks that question is about to come up. Fight well, but how do you fight just well enough?

Full post as published by Althouse on September 07, 2008 (boomark / email).