Hugh Hewitt and I talked a bit about this last night… on paper, tales of Hillary’s iron-fisted rule of the White House, in that noted right-wing rag the Los Angeles Times, should concern rank-and-file Democrats. Bill Clinton’s willingness to flat-out lie and claim that he opposed the Iraq war from the start should concern rank-and-file Democrats.

But it doesn’t. And the reaction to Clinton’s statement is likely to be more revealing than his statement itself: no matter what strengths Edwards and Obama have, no matter how many gaffes, mistakes, or lies are told by the Clintons, the rank-and-file of the Democratic party will stand with Hillary, no matter what.

(By contrast, a Republican who boldly claimed that he had always opposed the war, despite many public comments supporting it, would quickly become a laughingstock.)

I wrote a little while back:

Declaring that Hillary Clinton has done nothing wrong is as instinctive as breathing to many Democrats now.
Nominating Obama or Edwards over Hillary now would invalidate all of those defenses over the years. It would mean her critics had a point all these years, and they cannot concede that core belief they’ve held close to their hearts for a decade and a half. Democrats aren’t just supportive of Hillary Clinton’s rise to the presidency: they’re emotionally and intellectually invested in it.

The Democratic primary may be over very quickly, and those of us who have watched closely from the outside may conclude that it was never really a contest. The Democratic Party is the Clintons; the Clintons are the Democratic Party. Until they hang up their campaigning suits and pantsuits, the Democratic Party is a subsidiary of Clintons Inc.