Photo by Flickr user figleaf (me for once!) Used under a Creative Commons license.

1) If I stop looking at Senator Hillary Clinton for a minute I see a lot of really wonderful, actually powerful women in politics. Including all but one of my major national, state, and local representatives, all of whom are very experienced and highly qualified, and one of whom is only two impeachments away from the Oval Office. To say that Clinton is the epitome of women in power does a disservice to everyone else.

2) Fantasies of ‘wingers, and fears of supporters notwithstanding, Senator Clinton’s increasingly disgraceful behavior disgraces only her. Any more than, say, Ralph Nader’s behavior in 2000 disgraced only him and not all men (despite his end-stage macho antics), nor all citizen activists, nor all government watchdogs, nor environmentalist, and so on.

3) And speaking of which! People keep dragging gender into Senator Clinton’s antics. Besides being kind of thuggish (update: see also Ann Bartow) it’s a distraction from the real problem: She’s transforming herself into the Ralph Nader of 2008 — a previously admirable, personally likable activist who’s become toxically self-centered and self-righteous and no longer seems to care who gets hurt.

4) And speaking of which again! Just like Ralph Nader in 2000, Senator Clinton seems to be developing a hard core of supporters bent on sticking to her to the bitter end. Possibly enough to, as in 2000, influence the outcome of the election.** And here’s the deal with that: the kind of progressives who stayed home in a self-righteous huff rather than support Ralph Nader’s rival in 2000 are exactly the same kind of people who’ll stay home rather than “betray” what Senator Clinton “stood for” in 2008.*** And while I’m sure no one’s polling for this I really, really wish there could be a way to break out those who followed Nader down in 2000 to those who say they’ll follow Clinton down in 2008. It’s certainly worth asking her supporters one on one.****

[** Forget the relative handful of people who actually voted for Ralph Nader in the general election and, arguably (they argue it especially) had no effect on the outcome. Consider instead the millions more who stayed home, demoralized, because a long-term, respected icon condemned the future Nobel Prize winner as undistinguishable from George W. Bush and therefore undeserving of progressive’s votes. —fl]

[*** Update: Slightly edited. The original referenced the subset of Clinton supporters in, say, West Virginia and Kentucky who told exit pollsters they’d vote for McCain in the general one way or the other but especially didn’t want Obama to get the nomination. Generally speaking they’re not the sort who voted for Nader in 2000. —fl]

[**** And given the average age of the Senator’s hard-core support is similar to mine it might be fair to ask how many of them helped elect Ronald Reagan in 1980 by protest-voting for independent candidate John Anderson as a protest against Jimmy Carter. I’m pretty sure there’ll be a lot of overlap there too. —fl]