Girl Gone Wild

As her hopes of winning the Democratic nomination slip further and further away, Hillary Clinton is poised to stage her very own Götterdämmerung, the apocalyptic destruction of Valhalla that wraps up Wagner's Ring Cycle. She is apparently determined to fight to the finish, no matter how pointless it might be nor how she may destroy the Democratic Party in the process. And in doing so, she is validating all those times the Republicans called her a Machiavellian figure who cares only for her own power and ambition.

Several examples of her recent actions throw this into sharp relief:

1. She cited analysis done by Karl Rove - Karl Rove! - supposedly proving her to be the stronger candidate in the fall election.
2. Months after publicly backing the Democratic National Committee's refusal to honor Michigan and Florida's primary results because the two states broke party rules on scheduling their primaries, she now says that the DNC's actions are on par with slavery, denying women the right to vote, and the stolen election in Zimbabwe.
3. She claims that Barack Obama won a majority of pledged delegates (that is, delegates chosen directly by primary and caucus voting) not because he is the better candidate but because male Democrats and everyone in the media are a bunch of sexist woman-haters.
4. After the Supreme Court declared George W. Bush to be president back in 2000, she supported the abolition of the Electoral College and making the presidential election a straight popular vote. However, she now wants Democratic superdelegates to disregard the popular vote - which she is losing unless you include Michigan (where Obama wasn't even on the ballot) and Florida - and support her in sufficient numbers to give her the nomination.
   

And so on. She certainly has every right to continue running even after it's become a lost cause, but her increasingly scorched-earth tactics, combined with her ever more hysterical rhetoric, are doing herself and the party more and more damage. Her latest antics have alienated most of her biggest supporters, especially in the high-profile liberal blogs, and it's only going to get worse.

She has to take a good long look at herself in the mirror and ask herself a tough question: is it worth it? Is it really worth tearing the Democratic Party apart just to get nominated for a fall election which she may very well lose anyway?

Only Hillary Clinton can really answer that question.