My first thought was, “Why is Katie Couric pregnant?” Oh, yeah, because Amy Poehler is in real life. Sarah Palin is not an unintelligent woman, but– the look, the accent, the life story, the Oh-God-I-totally-forgot-there-was-a-quiz-today-why-didn’t-I-study-last-night interviewing style– she just presents so many comedic avenues. The sad part is that Tina Fey’s answer on the bailout is almost word-for-word exactly what Palin said.

In other news, a lot of people do Bill Clinton (at least, that’s what she said), but Darrell Hammond is Bill Clinton. I’ve been meaning to post about Clinton’s lukecold support of Barack Obama. Does anyone seriously think he’d be going out of his way repeatedly to praise John McCain if Hillary was the nominee? But Hammond captures it perfectly: “I… support… Barack Obama… is something I’ve heard from people all over this country.”

And SNL did do a skit on the debate, but it was boring and ran long, so I won’t waste your time. Fred Armisen still hasn’t figured out how to make Barack Obama funny. Again, my idea: Keenan Thompson (or better yet, Tracy Morgan) as the Barack Obama presidency that “skeptical” whites are afraid of. Have President Obama in the White House passing legislation that use of racial slurs is now a felony. Have President Obama bringing Secretary of State Diddy to negotiations with Ahmadinejad– and get Diddy to play himself (how about a Making the Supreme Court skit?). Have President Obama end every skit with an “As-Salaam Alaykum” and a fist bump. The possibilities are literally endless. Step it up, SNL. Armisen just umming and uhhing his way through Tony Rezko jokes is not getting the job done.

Andrew Sullivan:

…after decades of hardball politicking, she and her husband have become completely indistinguishable from the forces that first tried to destroy them.

Carl Bernstein (h/t: warner):

What you see is what you get: Hillary’s cynical view of the larger interests of the Democratic Party, exhibited in her 3 a. m. red telephone ad.

Josh Marshall:

So speaking for myself I’ve spent too much time over, what, 15 years now? … defending both Clintons from similarly ginned up nonsense to have much energy left to help out as they pull the same puffed up outrage act against another Democrat. I guess I’m just not feeling it.With the Wright business and now with this, the more nuanced version of the Clinton line has been that what ‘we’ think is not really the point. It’s what Republicans will do with it in the fall. And that’s a real concern that I definitely have. I won’t deny it. I’ve never thought Obama was a perfect candidate. But as we get deeper into the primary calendar, increasingly so, this ‘what the Republicans will do’ line has become more of a simulacrum, or a license, if you will, to do what Republicans actually do do. That is to say, to grab for political advantage by peddling stereotypes about Democrats and liberals that are really no less offensive than the ones we’re talking about about Americans from small town and rural America.

And seeing Hillary go on about how Obama has contempt for folks in small town America, how he’s elitist, well … no, it’s not because I think she’s either. I never have. But after seeing her hit unfairly with just the same stuff for years, it just encapsulates the last three-plus months of her campaign which I can only describe as a furious descent into nonsense and self-parody. Part of it makes me want to cry. But at this point all I can really do is laugh.

And it’s killing me that I can’t find this quote, but one Democratic official earlier this week remarked that Hillary Clinton’s strategy for building the Democratic Party looks remarkably similar to the GOP’s strategy for building the Democratic Party.

But all this disappointment and confusion can be cleared up with one simple revelation: The Clintons are acting like Republicans because, well, they are Republicans. They’re Republicans who at some point realized they would have greater political success in the other party. I wouldn’t go so far as to use the term “Manchurian Republicans,” but I encourage others to take that and run with it.

Hillary Clinton, a former Goldwater Girl and President of the Young Republicans at Wellesley, perhaps stated it best during her college years in a letter to a friend: “I’m a heart liberal, but a mind conservative.”

The thought of the Clintons as Republicans may sound absurd, but let’s stop and think about what they’ve accomplished on behalf of the Democratic Party: NAFTA, welfare reform, Telecom Reform Act (paving the way for the expansion of Rupert Murdoch’s empire), death penalty expansion, extraordinary rendition, Defense of Marriage Act, Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, and consistent Democratic losses in Congress throughout the Clinton administration. Triangulating– a political tactic that has become synonymous with the Clintons– is not taking two sides of an issue and finding a third way. It’s taking the Republican side of the issue, wrapping it up in a Democratic package, and finding a way to sell it to both sides.

The Clintons are now engaged in a campaign that long ago became mathematically hopeless and now serves zero purpose whatsoever other than to undermine the most promising Democratic candidate in a generation by using tactics perfected by Lee Atwater and Karl Rove. They are doing all they can to help John McCain convince small town, rural, and red state voters that Barack Obama– a candidate who has been remarkably strong in all those demographics– is really an out-of-touch, unpatriotic, liberal elitist. Because of the efforts of the Clintons over the last few months, an election year that was set up for sweeping Democratic victories across the country is turning into a genuine toss-up.

Whatever short-term bones and moral victories the Clintons have thrown the Democratic Party over the years, most of their major accomplishments– from surviving Monica-gate to fanning Bitter-gate– have served to undermine its long-term interests. To use a basketball analogy, they are the selfish superstars who score 40 points every night, but don’t really believe in the system the team is running, don’t distribute the ball, don’t make their teammates better, do nothing to aid the team’s up-and-coming young players (because there’s only room for one star on the team), and don’t really care that the team loses every night– as long as they get their stats, their endorsements, their individual awards, and their faces on the cover of Sports Illustrated.

So at what point do the Democrats realize that they need to win in November more than they need the Clintons’ 40 points a night? At what point do superdelegates use the power they’ve been given to “do what’s in the best interest of the party” to do what’s in the best interest of the party? And lastly, at what point will people stop being disappointed, surprised, saddened, or shocked that the Clintons look so transparently similar to the Republicans, not only in tactics but philosophy?

It’s not that they’ve suddenly turned into Republicans, they’ve just gotten worse at hiding it.

Here’s my view on these kinds of attack ads: Either do real interviews with real people, or do scripted lines with actors. Mixing scripted lines with real people almost always falls flat.

In any case, it’s clear the Clinton campaign is overplaying its hand here. Though at this stage of the game (this stage being about a half hour after the end of the game), do they have much choice? They needed a game-changer, and it looks like a poorly-worded offhand remark by Obama is as good as its going to get for them between now and next Tuesday. When you’re losing with voters on the issues, your best shot– according to the Clinton-Rove handbook– is to turn the campaign into a referendum on non-issues.

Unfortunately for Clinton, this Obama-is-out-of-touch line of attack may be whipping up a frenzy among the pundits and the chattering class, but it doesn’t seem to be catching on among actual voters. A quick survey of local Pennsylvania newspaper coverage of Bitter-gate shows either a lot of shrugs or outright tumbleweeds. The paper in Scranton– the sixth largest city in Pennsylvania and the home of a certain Dunder Mifflin branch– endorsed Obama Sunday.

Earlier today, Hillary Clinton– appearing at an event after Barack Obama had already spoken– got heckled by a crowd of Pittsburgh steelworkers when she tried to push the apparently not-so-hot button issue:

“I understand my opponent came this morning and he spent a lot of his time attacking me,” she said, before being interrupted with several seconds of murmurs and groans from the crowd. “Well, you know, I know that many of you, like me were disappointed by recent remarks that he made.”

More groans and at least one “No” from the crowd.

“And I think it’s important that, you know, we give people the chance to really compare and contrast us,” Clinton continued. “You know, I am well aware that at a fundraiser in San Francisco, he said some things that many people in Pennsylvania and beyond Pennsylvania have found offensive.”

A few more “No”s.

And finally ABC News caught Bill Clinton reaching a bit too far in trying to make his case for voter outrage:

Over seven stops in North Carolina, Clinton said “Everywhere I go there are all these people with signs, saying I’m not bitter – I’m not bitter.”

Clinton said during a stop in Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania “this fellow said to me… “President Clinton, we are not bitter, we just want to turn the country around.” Clinton said another supporter in North Carolina said “I hunt ’cause I like to and I go church ’cause I need to. And if I were a millionaire, I would still hunt and go to church.’ He said what we need is to get this country together, get it on the road and go forward. So that is what this election is about. And we all gotta go forward together. We all have to go forward together.”

The strong sentiments were appreciated by the crowd, but were not entirely accurate. During Clinton’s seven stops in North Carolina on Saturday there were no “I’m not bitter” signs. There was a small assortment of people at his later events wearing stickers with the slogan, but many of those sporting the stickers weren’t even sure what they meant. Clinton also was a bit confused about his encounter in Pennsylvania. The conversation actually took place at an earlier event in Bloomsburg, PA – or so Clinton told the crowd in Bloomsburg.

Anybody who believes those were real conversations Clinton had with voters must not understand what the definition of is is.

At any rate, polls this close to the primary are typically meaningless, so there’s no way to know for sure whether Pennsylvania voters are buying the latest shiny bauble being peddled by the Clintons or whether they’re tired of playing the Washington games that seem to have one winner and millions of losers. But judging from the fact that “I’m not bitter” stickers seem to be selling like Crystal Pepsi, it looks like small town voters aren’t nearly as dumb as the Clintons think.

The lies and mischaracterizations have been well documented by now, but here’s the Cliffs Notes version:

1. Hillary told the tale twice in the morning and I believe once in the afternoon, but definitely never at 11:00 p.m. at night.
2. She didn’t tell the story once, she told it at least three times.
3. She didn’t immediately acknowledge the error. In fact, her campaign initially mocked comedian Sinbad for questioning her version of events before they realized that there was a videotape of the incident that– like Sinbad– wildly contradicted her version of events.
4. She has acknowledged the error but she has yet to– as Bill claims– apologize for it.
5. According to the pilot of the plane, he has never in his career ordered anyone to sit on their flak jackets.
6. Again, as has been reported and fact-checked several times, there were no snipers in the hills. No one expected snipers in the hills. At no time during the trip was there any danger or security threat whatsoever to Hillary, Chelsea, Sinbad, or Sheryl Crow.
7. And lastly– not a lie, but certainly a gaffe– is the comedy of Clinton suggesting that people should cut Hillary a break because basically she’s old, and like most old people she gets tired and groggy at the wee hour of 11:00 p.m at night. I don’t think there’s a news organization or blogger on the planet who hasn’t yet contrasted this with the irony of Hillary’s claims that she is most ready to handle that 3:00 a.m. phone call in the White House. If she’s old and tired and prone to mistakes and possibly in need of a diaper change at 11:00 p.m., how’s she going to answer the phone and deal with a national crisis four hours later?

The reaction around the media and the blogosphere has been swift and justifiably unforgiving. Ana Marie Cox at Time called Bill Clinton’s defense possibly “the most dense collection of misrepresentations ever collected into a single statement by a politician.” Jake Tapper at ABC needed to use footnotes to document and properly cite all the lies. Even Nancy Pelosi suggested that Clinton “may have been having a late-night adult moment.”

Most interestingly, the First Read team at MSNBC makes this argument:

Watching Bill on the trail makes folks wonder whether he could have held up to scrutiny in 1992 had YouTube and instant fact-checking existed back then. No one has seemed less prepared for the intense scrutiny of this campaign than Bill. He seems to forget that even when he’s in rural Indiana, he’s on the national stage.

In ’96, the Clinton campaign thought their local market strategy was innovative (it was), since it allowed him to talk to key media markets outside of the interference of the national press. Now, the national press is everywhere since local can become national in an instant. Today’s Bill Clinton gaffe is going to revive this question: Has Bill Clinton helped HRC’s bid more than he’s hurt it? She may not have gotten this far without him, but is he preventing her from getting to the finish line?

Any questions of whether Bill Clinton is hurting Hillary’s campaign more than he’s helping it have to be weighed against the fact that she most likely wouldn’t even be a senator, let alone a presidential candidate, let alone a presidential candidate who began her campaign with enormous institutional and financial advantages, if she were not Mrs. Clinton.

Also, while the media and the blogosphere is firmly entrenched in the YouTube era, the vast majority of the American public is not– as evidenced by the fact that even the most viral political videos only get a couple million hits or so. It may have been easier for Bill Clinton to get away with these sleight of hand tricks in the 1990s, but I promise that even now these stories are going over the heads of most voters.

Most people already know that Bill Clinton can’t help himself but to run his mouth– often unconcerned with the truthfulness of what’s coming out of it– especially when there are cameras (or, some would say, women) around. Outside the necessary discipline of being a candidate himself, he literally cannot not run his mouth.

It’s not difficult to imagine how this trait would carry over into a White House where he would have no real responsibility or accountability to anyone but Hillary, but voters thus far don’t seem to be concerned with that possibility. Nevertheless, for Hillary Clinton’s campaign, the benefit of the crowds Bill brings in, the instant credibility he gives to Hillary’s candidacy, and the countless political favors he’s cashing in on her behalf outweigh the occassional reminder of how the Clintons really operate– and no one knows all this better than Hillary Clinton.

The fact is, the only way Bill could really damage Hillary’s campaign from this point forward is to begin revealing some of the hidden cracks in their relationship– any behind the scenes tension that might… Wait, this just in:

The former president said that his wife called him last night to ask him to let the issue lie. “Hillary called me and said ‘You don’t remember this. You weren’t there, let me handle it.’ I said, ‘Yes ma’am.’”

POSTSCRIPT:
More about Bill’s defense of Hillary’s Bosnia tale. Here is Bill Clinton on February 7, 2008 acknowledging the mistakes he made running his mouth in South Carolina and explaining the lessons he had learned– number one being that he, as a former president, should let Hillary defend herself. The irony is staggering:

Everything I have said has been factually accurate. But I think the mistake that I made is to think that I was a spouse like any other spouse who could defend his candidate. I think I can promote Hillary but not defend her because I was president. I have to let her defend herself or have someone else defend her.

…

Whenever I defend her, I a) risk being misquoted and b) risk being the story. I don’t want to be the story. … This is her campaign and her presidency and her decisions. And so even if I win an argument with another candidate, it’s not the right thing to do. I need to promote her but not defend her. And I learned a very valuable lesson from all that dust-up.

Short version: Vote for Hillary Clinton or your children will die in their sleep.

UPDATE: The response from the Obama campaign.

BETTER UPDATE: In the red phone ad wars, Bill Clinton sides with Barack Obama.

Now one of Clinton’s laws of politics is this: If one candidate’s trying to scare you and the other one’s trying to get you to think, if one candidate’s appealing to your fears and the other one’s appealing to your hopes, you better vote for the person who wants you to think and hope.

Actually, this video is from 2004 (back when “hope” wasn’t a four-letter word for the Clintons). But the irony is mind-boggling.

Dean has remained fastidiously neutral and low-key in this presidential cycle. Yet a number of his top supporters believe the Clinton-Obama contest has become a referendum on the kind of grassroots party building and citizen empowerment Dean pioneered as a presidential candidate and continued as DNC chair. On that issue most Deaniacs, not surprisingly, side with Obama. “Ever since the TV era began in 1960, every single presidential campaign in America has been top-down,” says Joe Trippi, Dean’s ’04 campaign guru and an adviser to John Edwards before he dropped out of the race. “Only two have been bottom-up. One was Dean. The other is Obama.” 

The story also takes an in-depth look at how, a few years ago, the Clintons tried to push Howard Dean out the door of the DNC, but were thwarted by the tremendous nationwide success of Dean’s tactics in the 2006 midterm elections.

What’s amazing is how the Clintons complain about “taking fire” from Republicans or being treated unfairly by the press, yet somehow they manage to make enemies wherever they go– even within the Democratic Party.  Clearly if the nomination battle goes to the convention and Howard Dean is moderating, it’s not hard to guess which side he’ll be leaning towards.  (There have been reports that Al Gore and Nancy Pelosi are leaning heavily in Obama’s direction as well.)

What else is amazing is how much the Clintons are political dinosaurs in many ways, who can’t let go of what may have worked in the past, even if it’s badly outdated now.  It’s why they just this month realized that they should start pushing their Web site and soliciting small donors, and it’s why they’ve been barely competing in and consistently losing in traditionally red states and caucus states by 20 points or more (losing large chunks of delegates along the way).  And it’s why an election between Hillary Clinton and John McCain would be a coin toss for Democrats at best.

Great read.

Clinton– who is himself a superdelegate by virtue of being a former president– explained his decision to a group of reporters outside an Obama campaign rally in Ohio, where Clinton was later scheduled to speak.  “My former constituents– the entire United States of America– are overwhelmingly supporting Barack Obama,” Clinton said.  “And just like all the other representatives who have switched to Obama, I simply cannot and will not vote against the will of the people I served.”

The former president’s move is just the latest sign of trouble for the Clinton campaign, which in the past few weeks has spiraled into financial distress, replaced campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle, lost eight contests in a row, and is now seeing a surge of superdelegate support in Barack Obama’s direction.

Senator Hillary Clinton sought to quickly turn the situation to her advantage, hoping that the controversy surrounding her husband’s move would help her solidify a rapidly dwindling lead with women voters.  “You know, this is just one more example of the all-boys club of presidential politics piling on,” she told supporters at a fundraiser in Texas.  “Clearly, some men just can’t handle the idea of a strong woman who they’re married to in the White House.”

The New York chapter of the National Organization for Women took Senator Clinton’s sentiments a step further.  “Women have just experienced the ultimate betrayal,” they said in a statement released to members.  “President Clinton’s endorsement of his wife’s opponent in the Democratic presidential primary campaign has really hit women hard.  Women have forgiven President Clinton, stuck up for him, stood by him, buried their anger, hushed all that stuff in the ’90s.

“And now the greatest betrayal!  We are repaid with his abandonment!  He’s picked the new guy over us.  He’s joined the list of progressive white men who can’t or won’t handle the prospect of a woman president who is Hillary Clinton (they will of course say they support a woman president, just not ‘this’ one).”

In a press conference, Clinton chief strategist Mark Penn attempted to downplay the significance of President Clinton’s decision.  “It’s clear that Senator Obama is the establishment candidate in this race,” Penn said, ”and it’s not surprising that the old guard of Washington would rally around him, despite his past cocaine use.  Senator Clinton, on the other hand, represents change.  She wants to break with the bitter, divisive battles of the 1990s, and frankly President Clinton’s presence in this campaign undermined that message.”

Clinton communications director Howard Wolfson also characterized the move by President Clinton as expected.  “If there’s one thing we know about President Clinton,” Wolfson said, “it’s that he will stop at nothing to win, even if it means switching sides to do so.  But clearly he’s made a mistake, because while Senator Obama may be winning the majority of delegates and states, keep in mind that all the states he’s won either have caucuses, large African-American populations, Republican majorities, large white populations, primaries, Democratic majorities, or elected governors.  Meanwhile, Senator Clinton is dominating both in states she’s lived in recently and in states that begin with the letters ‘C’ or ‘N’, except for Colorado, Connecticut, North Dakota, and Nebraska, which obviously don’t count.”

Later, inside the Obama campaign rally, Former President Clinton surprised the crowd by wasting no time going on the attack against his wife.  “It is wrong that Hillary got to go through 18 debates trumpeting her superior experience and how she would be ready on Day One,” Clinton said, ”and never got asked one time, not once, ‘Well, how could you say that when your biggest executive experience involved you running America’s health care system into the ground?

“‘And your other executive experience?  In 2006, you hired your buddy Patti Solis Doyle to manage your Senate reelection campaign, and she burned through $30 million and then lied to everyone about the amount of money she spent.  But instead of firing her, you put her in charge of your entire presidential campaign, knowing full well she wasn’t qualified for the position, and she goes and does the exact same thing.  And you end up having to loan your campaign $5 million of my money.

“‘Worse than all that,” Clinton continued, ”I handed you almost two decades of presidential connections and favors and establishment support and fundraising networks and every other political advantage known to mankind, and the best you could do is win 11 out of 33 states?’  Give me a break.  This whole thing is the biggest fairy tale I’ve ever seen.”

But last night, Obama began baiting the media by saying that if Clinton put $5 million of her own money into the campaign, then she should release her tax returns because people have a right to know where that money came from.  Uh-oh.  It’s not that the Clintons don’t have that kind of legit money.  They do.  CNN Money estimates their net worth at $35 million, saying:

When Bill Clinton first ran for President in 1992, Hillary provided most of the couple’s income working for the Rose law firm in Little Rock; he earned only $35,000 a year as governor of Arkansas.

Although she takes in $165,200 a year as a senator, these days Bill is breadwinner-in-chief. His presidential pension is $201,000 a year, and he grabbed a $12 million advance for his 2001 memoir, “My Life.” (Her “Living History” won an advance of $8 million and $7 million in royalties.)

But it’s been Bill’s great gift for gab that has really feathered the Clintons’ nest. He earned an astounding $41 million speaking to groups and corporations in the first six years since he left office. Standard fee: $150,000. The fact that he may be married to the next President can only burnish his star power.

So they definitely have the money to drop $5 million into her campaign.  But then there’s things like the Clinton library, which reportedly was bankrolled by Saudi investors.  And there’s other things, like the $31 million Kazahk mining deal to fund Bill Clinton’s charitable foundation reported last week in the New York Times.  And there’s other things like:

As Mrs. Clinton’s presidential campaign has intensified, Mr. Clinton has begun severing financial ties with Ronald W. Burkle, the supermarket magnate, and Vinod Gupta, the chairman of InfoUSA, to avoid any conflicts of interest. Those two men have harnessed the former president’s clout to expand their businesses while making the Clintons rich through partnership and consulting arrangements.

Mr. Clinton has vowed to continue raising money for his foundation if Mrs. Clinton is elected president, maintaining his connections with a wide network of philanthropic partners.

None of this suggests that the Clintons have profited personally from their questionable public dealings, but it does show a willingness to bend the rules of post-presidential ethics.  And if they bend the rules with the Clinton Library and the Clinton charitable foundation, chances are there’s a few skeletons in their tax returns as well.  By putting their own money into Hillary’s campaign, and doing so publicly, the Clintons took a calculated risk that the sympathy garnered from that act of desperation would energize their small donors in a way that Hillary’s awkward plugging of her website over the past few weeks could not.  And on the surface the risk paid off, as they saw their contribution doubled within a matter of days.  But the other side of the coin is that by transferring such a substantial amount of their money into the public campaign finance sector, they are inviting scrutiny not just on that $5 million, but on the entirety of their personal income.  And that, along with other aspects of their personal lives, is the last thing the Clintons want to be talking about down the home stretch of this presidential campaign.