Must be Clinton voodoo

IT IS AN odd article of faith among conservatives that Hillary Clinton is a sure-fire lock to win the Democratic presidential nomination. You can hardly turn on Fox News without hearing some pundit assure viewers that Clinton is the runaway favorite. But this belief says more about them than it does about her. The belief in her invincibility is a product of their deepest fears.

After all, it's not as though conservatives think that Clinton is a brilliant, natural politician. Nobody does -- as a backslapper and as a public speaker, she's decidedly average. When they try to talk about why Clinton inevitably will roll over her primary competition, they usually invoke the dreaded "Clinton machine." A recent Wall Street Journal editorial, for instance, asserted that Clinton is the clear favorite but offered little evidence to support this other than the existence of "those Clinton legions -- of fundraisers, union chiefs, party bosses, think tank operatives, media consultants."

Conservatives rarely make clear exactly how this dreaded machine is supposed to mow down the competition. Other candidates have fundraisers, union supporters, media consultants and the like.

Is the idea that Clinton's team is so battle-tested from her husband's presidency that it knows how to play the game far better than the competition? It's a plausible theory, but so far it doesn't seem to be working out that way.

A week ago, South Carolina state Sen. Robert Ford, a Clinton supporter, declared that having a black man at the top of the Democratic Party would doom the entire ticket. That, of course, was just the thing Barack Obama wanted -- a chance to stand up for the right of African Americans to run for president. "When folks were saying, 'We're going to march for our freedom,' they said, 'You can't do that,' " he said in his next speech. "When somebody said, 'You can't sit at the lunch counter.... You can't do that.' " It was the highlight of Obama's speech, all thanks to a blundering attack by a Clinton surrogate.

Then there is the continuing controversy surrounding Clinton's 2002 vote to authorize the Iraq war. Clinton's advisors have apparently decided that she will never apologize for the vote, as doing so would make her look weak in the general election. Which may be true, except that her war vote is hounding her everywhere she goes, the first primaries are nearly a year away and the war keeps getting worse.