“It’s the Bataan Death March”–Democratic White House Aide Describes the Hillary Campaign to Maureen Dowd

From the New York Times Maureen Dowd writes:

HILLARY CLINTON is the Democratic nominee.

Really.

Just ask her.

She should have been able to finally savor shattering that “highest, hardest glass ceiling” — the one she gloried in putting 18 million cracks in last time around — when she attends her convention in Philadelphia in July.

Instead, she is reduced to stomping her feet on CNN, asserting her dominance in a contest that has left her looking anything but dominant. Once more attempting to shake off the old socialist dude hammering her with a sickle, Clinton insisted to Chris Cuomo on Thursday: “I will be the nominee for my party, Chris. That is already done, in effect. There is no way that I won’t be.”

It’s a vexing time for the Clintons. As Bill told a crowd in Fargo, N.D., on Friday, it’s been an “interesting” year: “That’s the most neutral word I can think of.”

After all, why should Bernie Sanders get to be the Democratic nominee when he isn’t even a Democrat? And how is Donald Trump going to be the Republican nominee when he considers being a Republican merely a starting bid?

It must be hard for Hillary to look at all the pictures of young women swooning over Bernie as though he were Bieber.

She assumed that the fix was in, that she and the D.N.C. had arranged for the coronation that she felt she was robbed of in the tulip craze of 2008.

Everyone just laughed when Sanders, a cranky loner from Vermont with a nondescript Senate record, decided to challenge Queen Hillary. Clinton and her aides intoned — wink, wink — that it would be healthy to have a primary fight with Sanders and Martin O’Malley.

But Bernie became the surprise belle of his side’s revolutionary ball. And now he has gotten a taste of it and he likes it and he won’t let it go. He’s bedeviling the daylight out of Hillary.

Read the rest of the story here.