Dowd Misses the Mark

California Girl sends along Maureen Dowd’s weekly column, unsurprisingly, on Hillary, adding:

f*ck this broad (but it’s interesting and mostly well-written)

I read the piece twice, and I’m still a little unclear on what Dowd is trying to get to:

That Hillary should be applauded for ability to pivot? Or that she should be regarded as insincere?

That Obama and Clinton are basically one in the same, just years apart? Or that they are nothing alike?

That Hillary should drop out? Or that she shouldn’t give in to Obama, who “is like her idealistic, somewhat naïve self before the world launched 1,000 attacks against her, turning her into the hard-bitten, driven politician who has launched 1,000 attacks against Obama”?

If Dowd was trying to capture the lack of clarity in what should happen next; she succeeded in withholding a value judgment until her last line: “As she makes a last frenzied and likely futile attempt to crush the butterfly, it’s as though she’s crushing the remnants of her own girlish innocence.”

That’s where Dowd went wrong. This isn’t about destroying innocence; it’s about embracing pragmatism and winning in November.