Hillary haters are in overdrive - not even Obama can bring himself to show her any respect, writes Quentin Fottrell.
WHEN BARACK Obama deigned to look directly at Hillary Clinton during their debate in Austin, Texas, last Thursday he did so with what appeared to be barely concealed contempt. Back straight, head raised regally, he looked down his nose at this tough old broad whose crumbling campaign still stubbornly blocks the road ahead for him to finally claim his prize as the Democratic Party's presidential candidate.
As Clinton spoke, Obama persistently scribbled in his notebook. It takes generosity and security to "give" a scene to another player. Obama didn't. Plus, he did this during her closing remarks and after he had given his own. The debate was just over.
It looked like he was home free. He was not preparing a rebuff. This was a tactical distraction. Was this pen "dipped in the unvarnished truth", to quote Oprah, or was this mere doodling? In contrast, Clinton smiled often when Obama spoke. She engaged. She made the odd note, naturally, but she dignified her opponent's answers to questions about immigration, Iraq, the economy and - on those subjects where they differ most of all - their healthcare programmes and whether a US president should enter into dialogue with nations like Cuba or Iran without preconditions. (Clinton says no way. I'm with her on that.) But for someone who advocates an unconditional natter and elevenses between a sitting US president with Cuba's Raul Castro and Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Obama did not exactly return the compliment in Texas. He did everything but roll out a fireplace, lazyboy chair, pop a pipe in his mouth and hold up the evening paper to block out her voice like a boorish husband. By now, Clinton is used to it.
We look at Obama, but are supposed to see JFK or Martin Luther King. We fear he may be assassinated like them, while Clinton undergoes a prolonged character assassination. She shows emotion, she's a sobbin' woman. She wears pantsuits, she's asexual. She doesn't, she's showing her cleavage. She takes a potshot at Obama, she's a desperate housewife on a losing streak. She rolls out Chelsea Clinton, she's a madam.
Critics shout "iron my shirt" at her and it's a joke. If they hollered racially charged comments at Obama, there would be passionate editorials condemning them. Clinton has helped America's disenfranchised children with her 1997 State Children's Health Insurance Programme, which she sponsored (with her dear old friend Ted Kennedy, as it happens, who scarpered from her side when she needed him most).
When Obama and John Edwards ganged up against her in Las Vegas, she said: "This pantsuit, it's asbestos." That's what they call her in Washington: the Asbestos Pantsuit. She has never escaped the pressure to be the alpha shemale. I wonder if she would have cast that Iraq vote had she not felt the need to prove herself as a strong commander in chief? (Bill's delayed reaction to genocide in Rwanda may have played a part too.) Clinton once said, "I am a Rorschach Test." When Republican John McCain was famously asked, "How do we beat the bitch?" he laughed before answering. McCain began talking about "Senator Clinton". The questioner was, you may or may not be surprised to hear, a woman. Another man in that room joked: "She's talking about my ex-wife." At that moment, Hillary embodied both the hated career woman and ex-wife.
And on MSNBC's Hardball last year, she was likened to "a domineering mother". While trying to justify plagiarising his "Just Words" speech from Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick, Obama trotted out cliches to illustrate we can't own words. One of his quotes was strange: "Nobody puts Baby in a corner." Is that Obama's Rorschach Test of Clinton? By pulling him up on his blatant plagiarism, was she emasculating Baby? In Texas, Clinton told Obama, "That's not change you can believe in. It's change you can Xerox." It was a funny line. And true. Obama recreated Patrick's entire performance. But the crowd booed. They were reacting to her "going negative" and maybe less overtly to the clearly scripted line. But perhaps audience members, and University of Texas students who work with computers, saw a pernickety teacher, a Miss Jean Brodie.
Clinton's campaign is heading into a death spiral. Hillary haters are even scaring off some of her supporters. But like many mothers, wives of philandering husbands and career women, she comes alive in a crisis. The New York Times says she's sombre, focused on Ohio and Texas, though "no drapes are being measured" in the White House. Those hausfrau allusions again, indicating that the US may have never been ready for a female president.
Yet when Clinton briefly lets her guard down and talks healthcare, she has fire in her belly and crackles with emotion. In Texas, she did what Obama could not bring himself to do. She said she was "honoured" to be sitting next to him. I hope she does wins on March 4th because Rorschach Tests reveal prejudices, both cultural and political, and the darkest recesses of our minds. Like mirrors, they only ever reveal what we think of ourselves.