Recrimination Time.

“With a week to go before climactic tests in Texas and Ohio, Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign team has slipped into full recriminations mode. Looking backward, interviews with a cross-section of campaign aides and sympathetic outsiders suggest a team consumed with frustration and finger-pointing about the apparent failure of several recent tactical moves against Barack Obama. Looking forward, it is clear Clinton’s team has only a faint and highly improvisational strategy about what to do over the next seven days. Simply put, there is no secret weapon.” Politico’s Mike Allen and John F. Harris offer another dismal window into what looks to be the final days in Camp Clinton.

In related news, Atlantic blogger Marc Ambinder — who, along with Politico’s Ben Smith and Salon’s Joan Walsh, has been one of the more obviously Clinton-leaning pundits in the paid blogosphere (nice work if you can get it) — pretty much gives up hope: “The ‘HRC can come back’ bandwagon is rolling through town, and I spent a long time yesterday contemplating whether to jump on board. But the platform on which her supporters stand right now seems more tenuous by the day…Advisers figure that a loss in Texas is as likely as a win in Ohio; a large number of staffers appear to be willing to quit en masse next Wednesday if there’s a split decision and Clinton gives notice that she intends to fight for another month.“

Update: Former Chief of Staff and long-time Clinton loyalist Leon Panetta gives his own post-mortem for the campaign, and puts the blame squarely on Mark Penn: “‘[Penn] is a political pollster from the past. I never considered him someone who would run a national campaign for the presidency,’ he said. He asserted that Mr. Penn ‘comes from an old school, like Karl Rove — it’s all about dividing people into smaller groups rather than taking the broader approach that was needed.’“

Drowning in the Mud.

So, since Thursday night’s seemingly valedictory moment, when it seemed Sen. Clinton might withdraw from the presidential contest with dignity intact, we’ve witnessed the ridiculous “shame on you” farce, her grotesquely unbecoming (and unpresidential) spate of unhinged sarcasm, further railing against Obama’s foreign policy (in part by comparing him to Dubya), some really desperate whining about the press coverage, and — arguably a new low — her staff’s apparent attempt to get the “closet Muslim” smear machine up and running again with the already-infamous Somali gear pic. (Here’s a quick summary of recent events.) Update: One of the more egregious spins of the day: Combining the biased-press and Somali-photo tacks, a Clinton aide is quoted as saying, ““Wouldn’t we be seeing this on the cover of every magazine if it were [Clinton]?” Uh, no, because there’s obviously no whispering campaign arguing that Sen. Clinton is secretly Muslim. Really, what kind of idiots do you take us for?

It can only make you wonder what the next eight days will bring, and how much lower the Clinton campaign can possibly sink. I understand that they’re desperate now (See also Clinton supporter Geraldine Ferraro all but begging supers to back HRC), but they’ve really gone beyond the pale. At this point, I’m less outraged than I am just disgusted by Sen. Clinton, Mark Penn, and co. The self-immolation of the Clinton legacy is almost complete, and any goodwill they might’ve once enjoyed in progressive circles is well past exhausted. Let’s just hope the trail of slime they leave on their path to the exit doesn’t prove fertile ground for the Republicans in the general.

Update: Sen. Obama personally responds to the Somali pic flap: “Everybody knows that whether it’s me or Senator Clinton, or Bill Clinton, that when you travel to other countries they ask you to try on traditional garb that you have been given as a gift. The notion that the Clinton campaign would be trying to circulate this as a negative on the same day that Senator Clinton was giving a speech about how we repair our relationships around the world is sad. We are going to try to stay focused on what will make a difference in our foreign policy, including bringing the war in Iraq to an honorable end.” He then proceeded to twist the knife: “The notion that they would try to use this to imply in some way that I’m foreign, I think is, you know, unfortunate…These are the kinds of political tricks and silliness you start seeing at the end of campaigns.”

Update 2: The NYT surveys “what one Clinton aide called a ‘kitchen sink’ fusillade against Mr. Obama,” while the WP’s Dana Milbank reports on the efforts of the increasingly combative and bizarre Clinton spin room: “They are in the last throes, if you will…there was no mistaking a certain flailing, a lashing-out, as two Clinton advisers sat down for a bacon-and-eggs session yesterday at the St. Regis Hotel…[They offered] a fascinating tour of an alternate universe.”

Shame on you, Hillary Clinton.

“Enough with the speeches and the big rallies, and then using tactics right out of Karl Rove’s playbook. This is wrong, and every Democrat should be outraged…So shame on you, Barack Obama. It is time you ran a campaign consistent with your messages in public. That’s what I expect from you. Meet me in Ohio. Let’s have a debate about your tactics.” What was that about feeling “absolutely honored” the other night? No doubt in an attempt to stem all the final days talk, Sen. Clinton goes ballistic on Barack Obama this afternoon, claiming he’s the one that has used Rovian tactics this primary cycle. (Watch the video for the full “Dean Scream” effect. I wonder what Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland, fidgeting behind her, was thinking.) Sen. Obama responds here and here, and the Obama campaign’s official rebuttal is here.

Ok, I’m going to try to put this as delicately as I can: Sen. Clinton, shame the fuck on you. After all the low-down, reprehensible, and thoroughly scummy maneuvers we’ve seen from your campaign this primary cycle, no doubt courtesy of your $10 million bust Mark Penn, how dare you get before the public and act the aggrieved party here? I’ve compiled this list before, but let’s go over it again. In the past three months, Sen. Clinton and/or her campaign has:

tried to play the 9iu11iani fear card, the defining strategy of the Rovian playbook.

attempted to wallow in drug hysteria, and argued Obama was soft on mandatory minimums (Willie Horton ring a bell?)

blatantly distorted Sen. Obama’s remarks about Reagan to paint him a closet GOP’er.

sent out an obviously misleading mailer suggesting Obama was a closet pro-lifer.

sent out a blatantly false mailer about the social security cap that invoked the GOP standby, “He’s gonna raise your taxes!”

sent out a mailer on Obama’s health care plan that’s clearly more disingenuous than the one she decries above.

repeatedly tried to mischaracterize Sen. Obama’s stance on the Iraq war.

insinuated Obama was guilty of some undefined, unknown scandal later to emerge.

lobbied constantly to change the rules after the fact in Florida and Michigan.

suggested Obama was a well-spoken empty suit who peddles false hopes.

suggested Obama voters were dupes or cultists wanting only an “imaginary hip black friend.”

tried to push the story that Obama was soft on domestic “terrorists.”

seen campaign staff forward along “muslim”/madrassa e-mail smears about Sen. Obama.

seemingly sent out anti-“Barack Hussein Obama” robocalls in Nevada.

argued in obviously ridiculous fashion that Obama is a no-good plagiarist.

dabbled in the classic Southern strategy of the race card.

indulged in oppo research about Obama’s kindergarten stances.

tried to salvage her campaign with an obviously illegal 527, made up of $100,000 donors.

indulged in union-busting rhetoric when convenient (“They think they’re better than you.“)

actually attempted to suppress the vote in Nevada with the ill-advised casino lawsuit.

And I’m sure I’ve missed a few things. So who’s “using tactics right out of Karl Rove’s playbook” again? Don’t you worry, Sen. Clinton, “every Democrat should be outraged, and they are: That’s arguably one of the main reasons you’ve lost eleven contests in a row. It seemed the Clinton campaign had seen the situation for what it was, and was content to fade away, with grace and dignity intact. Had they done so, I might’ve let bygones be bygones. But, once they start indulging in this sort of Hail Mary raging against the dying of the light, which will no doubt poison the well for an easy reconciliation once Clinton has conceded, all bets are off. Update: This well-made video helps put today’s rant in perspective, and with Pink Floyd to boot.

Update 2: She’s getting worse.

Update 3: A few hours before the final Ohio debate, Sen Clinton concedes she “got a little hot over the weekend in Cincinnati.” Presumably, this means that the campaign’s internal polling suggests it backfired massively.

Deep in the Heart of Texas.

In case you missed it, debate No. 19, held in Austin, TX, came and went this evening. (Transcript.) My quick take: Not all that much news made here, and, as a tie goes to the defender, that’s a win for Barack Obama.

The big question coming in tonight was whether, after losing eleven contests in a row, Sen. Clinton would go into relentless-attack-mode (as desired by Mark Penn) or instead try to reassert her positives and perhaps prepare for a dignified exit to the race (as advised by Mandy Grunwald.) Well, the answer turned out to be yes. The first forty-five minutes or so were civil, agreeable, and thoroughly stultifying, basically a duller continuation of the LA debate of three weeks ago. Then, in the middle going, Sen. Clinton began trying to score some points, for example, by (once again) calling Obama a plagiarist and saying the Senator represented “change you can xerox.” (That canned line backfired rather badly, and drew the only boos of the night. I hope this is because most people realize the plagiarism charge is absolutely moronic.)

For his part, Sen. Obama — looking ever more presidential, as is the frontrunner’s wont — took the high road, correctly calling such maneuvers part of the “silly season” of politics and keeping the conversation mostly about substantive differences, such, as, once again, the interminable mandate question. (He had a particularly good response to the “cult” charge: “The implication has been that the people who have been voting for me or involved in my campaign are somehow delusional…The thinking is that somehow they’re being duped…and that eventually they’re going to see the reality of things. I think they perceive the reality of what’s going on in Washington very clearly.” Touche.)

The moment that’s getting a lot of the buzz right now is Sen. Clinton’s closing statement, which (Xerox alert!) borrowed heavily from both John Edwards and Bill Clinton in 1992. (I actually don’t care at all about that, but if you’re going to throw around spurious claims of plagiarism, you’d best be careful about that glass house.) More troublingly, in her close Sen. Clinton explicitly invoked her surprisingly game-changing Reverse Muskie back in New Hampshire. (She began this particular lip-quavering moment by asking herself the same goofy question she got in the diner: “How do you do it?”)

Now, I don’t want to claim Sen. Clinton is a fraud, even if she’s seemed considerably less than “absolutely honored to be here with Barack Obama” over the past three weeks of scurrilious charges and no concession speeches. If anything, I agree with CNN’s Jeffrey Toobin, who was much less enthralled by the moment than that venerable Establishment Davos-boogier, David Gergen. I think she got genuinely choked up for exactly the same reasons as she did back in NH. With the writing on the wall for her candidacy, this was a valedictory moment of sorts. Fine, she’s earned it, and I applaud her for seemingly choosing, at least for a few moments, a graceful exit that will help bring the party back together. That being said, I wouldn’t get such a guilty twinge of Bernie Birnbaum-ish grandstanding about it all if she hadn’t explicitly invoked the diner tear, and/or if Clinton flunky Howard Wolfson hadn’t immediately try to tell us afterward that this was “the moment she retook the reins of this race and showed women and men why she is the best choice.” Um, no, not really.

The Money Pit.

“Hillary Clinton ended January with $7.6 million in debt – not including the $5 million personal loan she gave to her campaign in the run-up to the critical Super Tuesday elections, according to financial reports released Wednesday.” With the January FEC reports filed, Politico takes a look at the sinking fiscal ship that is the Clinton campaign. The key graphs: “According to the reports, Clinton raised about $20 million in January, including her loan. She spent nearly $29 million during the month. She reported a cash balance of $29 million. But more than $20 million of that is money dedicated to the general election. Her personal loan accounts for more than half of the remaining approximately $9 million, leaving just about $4 million in cash raised from donors. But even that money is illusionary when measured against the reported $7.6 million in debts.” So add that all up and you get: no money. (Hence, the fatcat 527.) But the silver lining for Sen. Clinton? At least she’s making interest on that loan.

Over at TNR, Christopher Orr emphasizes this finding from the piece: “More than $2 million of the red ink is owed to chief consultant and adviser, Mark Penn.” So that goes a long way toward explaining why he’s still employed over there these days, despite his obvious incompetence.

And a commenter in the same TNR thread teases out another key line buried in the article: “[T]he lengthy laundry list of IOUs also includes unpaid bills ranging from insurance coverage, phone banking, printing and catering at events in Iowa, New Hampshire and California.” Wait a tic: Sen. Clinton, she of the much-touted mandate, is now ducking the insurance bills? Hmm…maybe affordability is the real problem after all.

Update: Politico‘s Kenneth Vogel has more on where the money went, including $10 million to Mark Penn and $1300 to Dunkin Donuts.

Update 2: The NYT piles on the terrible financing issue: “Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s latest campaign finance report, published Wednesday night, appeared even to her most stalwart supporters and donors to be a road map of her political and management failings…’We didn’t raise all of this money to keep paying consultants who have pursued basically the wrong strategy for a year now,’ said a prominent New York donor. ‘So much about her campaign needs to change — but it may be too late.‘”

Penn no better in Penn.

More signs of post-Feb. 5 incompetence from the Clinton camp. Just as they only recently “discovered” the rules in Texas, they somehow didn’t manage to file a full slate of delegates in Pennsylvania, despite having the backing of the state’s Democratic machine and despite Clinton supporter Gov. Ed Rendell giving the campaign an extension to do so. “It appears Clinton came up 10 or 11 candidates short across a number of congressional districts, including two in Philadelphia. That’s close to 10 percent of the 103 delegates to be decided by voters. It appears the shortage would’ve been double that if Rendell hadn’t extended last week’s candidate filing deadline by a day and a half, ostensibly due to bad weather.”

Second-Class Citizens.

“‘Superdelegates are not second-class delegates,’ says Joel Ferguson, who will be a superdelegate if Michigan is seated. ‘The real second-class delegates are the delegates that are picked in red-state caucuses that are never going to vote Democratic.‘” More bad news for non-Clinton-voting states: You’re not only insignificant to Mark Penn, a Clinton campaign co-chair thinks you’re second-class. Also, to the 2004 red-states of Ohio and definitely Texas, I’m afraid this pretty clearly includes you as well. Sorry, but, as always, please vote Democratic regardless.

Clinton: Obama is Bidenesque.

Sigh…Flailing about like a drowning victim, the Clinton campaign tries to accuse Sen. Obama of plagiarism for echoing remarks by friend and Obama supporter Gov. Deval Patrick of Massachusetts regarding the value of words. (Both quoted such examples as “We hold these truths to be self-evident,” “I have a dream,” and “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself” as times when words did, in fact, matter.) I’m sorry, but this is somewhat ludicrous, particularly coming from the grift-happy Clinton camp. (In fact, when asked point blank if Sen. Clinton has been known to lift from others, her campaign demurred.) For Gov. Patrick’s part, he said: “Senator Obama and I are long-time friends and allies. We often share ideas about politics, policy and language. The argument in question, on the value of words in the public square, is one about which he and I have spoken frequently before. Given the recent attacks from Senator Clinton, I applaud him responding in just the way he did.“

Ok, for one, much political rhetoric is by its nature an amalgamation of soundbites and talking points from other places. (See also Clinton and “Yes, we can,” or John McCain’s “ready to lead.”) For another, it’s not as if Sen. Obama (or his speechwriters) lifted entire paragraphs from some other source. He — and Patrick — both cited the most well-known examples in our history of words making a difference. It’s an obvious and devastating riposte to Clinton’s idiotic assertion that rhetoric is worthless. Could he have snuck Deval Patrick’s name in there? Well, I suppose so (as does Obama), but, really, this is pretty standard stuff in the political world. (And, before we consign ourselves to a political rhetoric characterized by interminable footnotes, let’s not forget: 95% of the time every word out of any candidate’s mouth — including Clinton’s — has been written by someone else.)

In any case, with this sad plagiarism riff, the Clinton campaign has shown once again that it will yield to nothing or noone in its race to the bottom. Please, go away, already. You’ve become an embarrassment to the Democratic party. Update: Former Carter speechwriter (and a friend and mentor of sorts) James Fallows calls shenanigans on the Clinton campaign.

Ready (to Screw Up) On Day One.

“Several top Clinton strategists and fundraisers became alarmed after learning of the state’s unusual provisions during a closed-door strategy meeting this month, according to one person who attended. What Clinton aides discovered is that in certain targeted districts, such as Democratic state Sen. Juan Hinojosa’s heavily Hispanic Senate district in the Rio Grande Valley, Clinton could win an overwhelming majority of votes but gain only a small edge in delegates.” The Clinton campaign “discovers” the long-standing Texas primary rules this month. I mean, why bother to learn the state rules before running for president (or before making Texas the last-ditch firewall)? As a TPM commenter deadpanned, Sen. Clinton must have just presumed she’d be greeted as a liberator.

What are they paying Mark Penn $4.3 million for again? Did their Texas strategy encompass anything beyond kids in mariachi outfits? This is rank incompetence, and no way to run a presidential campaign…or a country.

The Clinton Spin gets Even Dumber.

As the Clinton campaign begins pulling out all the stops in Wisconsin, Mark Penn, he of the “impressionable elites” and “insignificant states,” offers up another doozy: “Winning Democratic primaries is not a qualification or a sign of who can win the general election. If it were, every nominee would win because every nominee wins Democratic primaries.” So…winning primaries is not a good way to pick a candidate now. Can we still get Mike Gravel as our standard-bearer, then?

For his part, Clinton adviser and superdelegate Harold Ickes (son of the prominent progressive and New Dealer) at least conceded the importance of winning, although he too is putting his faith on a bailout by the supers (and/or a successful joint pincer movement with McCain.) According to him, the campaign will go until June, whereupon supers will flock to Clinton. “‘At or about – certainly, shortly after – the seventh of June, Hillary’s going to nail down this nomination,’ Ickes said. ‘She’s going to have a majority of the delegates.’” Sorry, not bloody likely. (About that June 7 match-up, tho, Sen. Obama recently picked up the endorsement of Puerto Rico Governor Anibal Acevedo-Vila, so even that final Clinton firewall looks to be suffering from a few cracks.)