The squealing from the Nutroots about how badly Black Political Jesus is being treated by the Clinton Camp is highly amusing.

It may be too much to hope for, but one thing they need to start to understand is it isn’t entirely about the issues. Nope, Clinton wasn’t the worst POTUS ever. He was smart enough to mostly stay out of the way of the economy, smart enough to mess with most of the world’s dictators enough to keep them off balance, and kept the rush of scandals to a dull roar, which is about all you can expect from most politicians. No, he wasn’t a great president on the merits. He blew it with North Korea and Pakistan, but then what world leader hasn’t blown it there? Similarly, he did a great job of sticking his head in the sand when it came to terrorists, but I can’t throw stones too much, since every POTUS since Kennedy has had the exact same impulse.

Where I have an enormous problem with Bill Clinton, is that he’s a lying, lecherous, egomaniac with horrendous manners, no sense of propriety, and a pack of attack dogs that he unleashes on anybody who doesn’t bow down. In short he employs most of the behaviors you’d expect of a rutting hog, if the hog had a bunch of hired muscle to help sating his appetites.

What’s going on right now in the Democratic Primary has nothing to do with political positions. Sure, Obama is all dreamy and his political positions are a little to the left of Hillary’s. But the fight isn’t political, it’s strictly personal. Only one scorpion is going to survive this fight, and to Bill’s way of thinking, Hillary is his scorpion.

Bill obviously takes it very personally; to him, this election is about whether the country will say, once again, “oh, Bill, yes, we love you so… here, take the White House, please!” He is invested in this in the way that only a man who is desperate to be thought well of could be invested; his plurality wins (41%; 49%) obviously still weigh on him, as does his impeachment. Clearly, he sees his wife’s campaign not as her own project, but as a chance he can exercise to win re-election to the WH. Naturally, anybody who gets in the way is going to get portrayed as a little bit nutty, a little bit slutty. Or as the Clinton campaign appears to have stated in a email whispering campaign, Obama is a little bit druggy, a little bit Islamo-thuggee.

I think a lot of the left’s, and many liberals’ foaming at the mouth about irrational Clinton hatred is explained by the fact that they haven’t a clue why we can’t stand Bill Clinton. I don’t really hate Bill Clinton, but I do seriously despise him, the way you would despise a foul-acting relative who shows up at every family event, only to create a scene, act inappropriately, and to try to make the whole event about themselves. As a gun owner who felt angered at being blamed for Columbine, as a radio talk show listener who felt outraged at being blamed for Tim McVeigh’s atrocity, as a taxpayer who got a blood pressure headache at being told my angst over my high tax bill was disgustingly selfish and proof that I hated children and minorities… I understand perfectly why somebody would hate Bill Clinton. He can’t open his mouth without some bit of self-serving, dishonest, borderline slanderous bit of rhetoric spilling out. He doesn’t fight fair, and he purports to be standing on the moral high ground at all times, when we know he actually prefers to spend most of his time in much lower regions. In terms the left might understand,

It’s teh hypocrisy, stoopid!

Hypocrisy is a fine thing when you’re using it as a social lubricant. But it’s not fine to be a hypocrite and to use your alleged high moral standards and your fine position to bludgeon others over and over again. Bill does this all the time, and it’s disgusting. He’s perfectly happy to talk about how it’s outrageous for Chris Wallace to question him, just outrageous, but then Bill is out finger-waggling and wallowing in the mud put on the campaign trail, an ex-president acting as if he’s a college intern for a political campaign. It’s just too damn much to take. And ultimately, that’s the source of ongoing conservative dislike of Bill Clinton. The man will not leave. He insists on sticking around, demanding that everybody profess their love for Bill. And the more we tell him to piss off, the more he gets in our face. We don’t care where he goes, just as long as he agrees to go.

Will this man not finally go away, and leave the country alone to get on with its business, without his permanent soap opera being thrust in our faces?

Even though Obama would be a stronger general election candidate, I’m kind of rooting for him, if it would mean that Bill would be good and repudiated, once and for all. Sadly, I’m sure that the compulsively overeating satyr will bounce back from that or any other defeat, but a guy can hope – hope being a virtue, of course, and not just some town in Arkansas with double wides and hog farms.

Update from Mike! AP points the way to this rib-tickling Jon Chait epiphany:

Am I starting to sound like a Clinton hater? It’s a scary thought. Of course, to conservatives, it’s a delicious thought. The Wall Street Journal published a gloating editorial noting that liberals had suddenly learned “what everyone else already knows about the Clintons.” (By “everyone,” it means Republicans.)

It made me wonder: Were the conservatives right about Bill Clinton all along? Maybe not right to set up a perjury trap so they could impeach him, but right about the Clintons’ essential nature? Fortunately, the Journal’s attempt to convince us that the Clintons have always been unscrupulous liars seemed to prove the opposite…

But the conservatives might have had a point about the Clintons’ character. Bill’s affair with Monica Lewinsky jeopardized the whole progressive project for momentary pleasure. The Clintons gleefully triangulated the Democrats in Congress to boost his approval rating. They do seem to have a feeling of entitlement to power.

Ah, the amusing sight of bleary-eyed ostriches — always willing to overlook any and all defects when it comes to one of their own — finally having their heads forcibly dragged from the sand, peering stupidly around like new-hatched chicks at an unfamiliar and perturbing landscape. Allah puts it this way:

In which reality does the reality-based community exist where the Clintons trying to claw their way through an election with unfair attacks constitutes a departure from form? Let me know, as it’ll come in handy the next time conservatives are accused of moronically hero-worshipping their political leaders while our betters cast a cold, unsparing critical eye at their own leading lights.

A question for the left: When these same tactics are inevitably deployed against the right in the general election (assuming she wins), will you perceive them as dirty tricks whose means are justified by the ends or will they not even qualify as “dirty” because anything but anything goes against the demon right? This may be where the confusion lies — by definition, you can’t be unfair to conservatives because nothing’s really “unfair” in total war. Against St. Barack, though? Horrors.

I’ll just content myself with quoting good old John McClane: welcome to the party, pal.