Bill Clinton earns a "Monica"

Hillary and her husband are now out to destroy our nominee. Your could argue that it kind of made sense when Hillary still had a chance (her kitchen-sink tactics were nasty, to be sure, they appeared to have crossed a line, but at least there was a logic to it when Hillary had a chance). Now that the race is over and Hillary has lost, her ongoing attempts to hurt Obama, to smear him, to make rural voters hate him, to convince America that a black man can't and shouldn't be president, make her little better than the Republicans she hated during the 1990s - people who were out to hurt her simply for the joy of inflicting pain.

Hillary won't stop, and the Superdelegates won't lift a finger. The powers that be in Washington have made clear that they're okay with Hillary launching Rovian attacks on Obama for another month or more. Why? Because, you see, Hillary's a frail thing. She really wanted to be president, and in her own mind, it was owed to her, and now she's sad. So let's just let her beat the crap out of our nominee with incredibly sleazy right-wing attacks for a good month, or maybe three, as a kind of electoral therapy.

Yeah, I don't think so.

This election is too important. We have to stop John McCain. We have to restore civil liberties and respect for the rule of law. We have to restore our credibility on the world stage. We have to restore a balance in the Supreme Court. Hillary is jeopardizing all of that. And if our leaders right-wing sleaze game, then we'll play the sleaze game along with her. If she wants to talk scandal, then we'll talk scandal. The only way our leaders in Washington will intervene and put a stop to this mess is for it to become as big a mess as possible. Then so be it. No more pulling punches for Hillary on AMERICAblog.

So, we're going to start a new metric here at AMERICAblog. Every time a Team Clinton player throws the kitchen sink at Obama - i.e., acts like a sleazy member of the vast right-wing conspiracy, rather than acting like a Democrat-first - we're going to award them a "Monica." For each outrage, we'll award between one to five Monicas, depending on the severity of the Clinton sleaze.

(And if any of our more creative readers want to help us out, take a really good picture of Monica and turn it into a kind of award, maybe a seal of approval, a face with gold star points around it or something - you get the idea, just make it look fun - then email it to me.)

We start off today by awarding Bill Clinton three Monicas for saying on Friday that Obama mocks rural voters, knowing full well that, now that Hillary has lost the nomination, all he's doing is hurting Obama in his battle against John McCain. Now that's pretty obnoxious, trying to hurt the Democrats' chances in the fall. And so, for being a petty jerk, for jeopardizing the fall elections even after his wife has lost the nomination, Bill Clinton earns himself 3 Monicas (we're pretty sure they won't be his last). Congrats, Bill!