The Birth of Hillary Nation

Sam Stein collects some comments from Clinton's die-hard supporters at last weekend's Rules & Bylaw Committee meeting:

"[Obama] is a cult. His campaign is an anti-woman cult."

"I will actively campaign against him."

"You know who is backing him is George Soros. It'll be George Soros, not Obama, who is running the country."

"South Dakota is totally rigged for Obama because of Tom Daschle. Obama's going to win South Dakota because he's buying it and rigging it."

"[Obama] is a socialist! You know what the Nazi Party was before it was the Nazi Party? It was the Socialist Party."

The intensity of this fear and venom shouldn't have blindsided me -- I'm the guy who says paranoia appears everywhere on the political spectrum, including the center -- but it did. It makes me take Hillary more seriously, not as a probable president but as a cultural phenomenon: Anyone who attracts that sort of passion is innately interesting. Even if it turns out that the passion was already floating around before it attached itself to a politician.

Bonus video: A rabid Clinton supporter is thrown out of the RBC meeting. On her way out, she calls Obama "an inadequate black male who would not have been running if had it not been a white woman that was running for president."

On a related note, here's a sneak peek at the Clinton campaign's next commercial: