Clinton campaign seeking feedback

Geoff Garin, Hillary Clinton's new chief strategist, is asking those on Clinton's email list to 'send your thoughts about our campaign.' Anyone can respond here. This is a golden opportunity for those who believe that Hillary is undermining the best Democratic opportunity in decades to build a working majority to tell the campaign what we think.

Nothing short of a resounding primary defeat in a major state in which she's strongly positioned is going to make Clinton drop out. But a few hundred thousand emails from committed Democrats letting the campaign know the extent to which her tactics are disaffecting large swaths of the party base and destroying her own standing might might inhibit the earth-scorching a bit.

A sample response:

To: Geoff Garin
From: A former Hillary supporter:

Since late March, Hillary Clinton's role in advancing the Democratic agenda has been entirely negative. She has been relentlessly undermining the likely nominee, violating Ronald Reagan's 11th Commandment and shredding her own credibility in the process. Her relentless flattery of McCain, her baseless claims to have crossed some mythical commander-in-chief threshold and her desperate willingness to seize on any minor gaffe of Obama's disqualify her to be the party's nominee.

If Ms. Clinton continues working to undermine Obama's core credibility as a candidate, she will permanently destroy her own standing and leadership stature within the party.

James Carville's diversion

James Carville's call in today's FT for us all to lighten up and accept hardball politics is a tad disingenuous. Claiming oversensitivity in the press and by the campaigns to "mildly offensive" comments, he provides cover for Clinton to let 'er rip:

Politics is a messy business, but campaigning prepares you for governing. It prepares you to get hit, stand strong and, if necessary, hit back. So our candidates need to buck up, toughen up and recognise that time spent whining and sniping is time not spent addressing the real concerns of the people.

By carping about oversensitivity to a few over-the-top remarks (and cleverly opening with a defense of the rival camp's eminently defensible Samantha Powers), Carville diverts attention from what's truly objectionable about Hillary Clinton's campaign: she is deliberately undercutting the viability of her own party's frontrunner in the general election. By absurdly claiming that she and John McCain "cross the commander-in-chief threshold" while Obama does not; by qualifying her denial that Obama is a Muslim; by deploying surrogates to state baldly that Obama can't win the general election and to insinuate that he appeals narrowly to black voters, she is well on the way to tearing the Democratic party apart.

Carville's cheerful (and tired) memories of his wife insulting the other party's candidate, and of more distant egregious insults in the political arena, are irrelevant. Clinton is violating Ronald Reagan's 11th Commandment: thou shalt not speak ill of fellow [party members]. For that
she deserves to be driven into the political wilderness.