Whether you believe Hillary's chances of wresting the nomination are, as her advisers said a few weeks ago, 10 percent, or maybe, more optimistically, 30 percent, she's still got an uphill path to the nomination. Which makes the glee with which she's been drilling Obama on his "bitter" comments a bit unsettling. Whether you're talking the ads in a general election swing state or the e-mails meant to convince the press corps. that Obama is an "elitist," she's still running against the likely Democratic nominee, and beating the tar out of him in a way that's almost certain to linger beyond the primary. Obviously, if you assume her incentives are purely to maximize the chance that she wins the nomination, a full-out assault makes some sense (though it can also backfire). But if you think that her strategy for winning the nomination should, in theory, be balanced by her concern for the chances of the likely Democratic nominee in November, then this stuff could prove dangerous. And yes, yes, I'm just writing this because I'm a misogynist who hates Hillary and loves Obama. There's absolutely no way decent progressives could find any of this worrying.
