For a Democratic presidential campaign to go into the general election without the Netroots is to fight with one hand behind your back. Yet, that is what the Clinton campaign intends to do. Their contempt for the progressive blogosphere is manifest and comes in comments from people as diverse as Al From and Paul Begala.

“They (bloggers) don’t really speak for the Democratic Party,” From said Thursday during a 45-minute chat in Las Vegas. He cited poll results that show Clinton with 51 percent of the vote against Rudy Giuliani (Pew Research) although she received only 9 percent on the liberal Web site [sic] Yearly Kos…

…”Look,” [Begala] said, “When we started there were only about 15 competitive races, but Rahm made the field over 35 by the end and that had nothing to do with the 50-state strategy.”

…”Anyway,” Begala continued… “I don’t need some a**hole from Vermont telling me what to do.”

Hillary Clinton may be a little more open-minded than the people that surround her, but that may not matter. In 2000, Al Gore decided that he wanted to talk about global warming and he gave a big speech. Joe Klein described what happened next in his book Politics Lost: How American Democracy Was Trivialized by People Who Think You’re Stupid:

He delivered the speech on June 27, in Philadelphia.
And nothing happened. The New York Times got the story right, citing Gore’s “broad vision” in the lead, but buried on page 24. The Washington Post played it inside as well and, worse, empahsized that this was Gore’s attempt to deal with high gasoline prices. The television networks also played the gas-price angle. The speech caused barely a ripple. “What the fuck happened?” the vice president asked his staff the next day, livid. “What went wrong?”
No one was sure…but, in the end, Gore came to believe that it was an act of passive resistance on the part of his consultants. They wanted a different campaign from the one he wanted.

Which is instructive. The candidates are not completely autonomous agents. You don’t elect a president, you elect a gang. And the Hillary gang is hostile to the activist base of the party. Maybe that is why they are planting questions in audiences all over the country. Leave it to the Grinnell college newspaper to break the story (which has since been picked up by CNN).

Gallo-Chasanoff, an undecided voter, said what happened was really pretty simple: she says a senior Clinton staffer asked if she’d like to ask the senator a question after an energy speech she gave in Newton, Iowa, on November 6.

“I sort of thought about it, and I said ‘Yeah, can I ask how her energy plan compares to the other candidates’ energy plans?'” Gallo-Chasanoff said.

“‘I don’t think that’s a good idea,” the staffer said, according to Gallo-Chasanoff, “because I don’t know how familiar she is with their plans.”

He then opened a binder to a page that, according to Gallo-Chasanoff, had about eight questions on it.

“The top one was planned specifically for a college student,” she added. ” It said ‘college student’ in brackets and then the question.”

And, it was not the first time.

Geoffrey Mitchell told NBC/NJ in a telephone interview that a Clinton campaign staffer approached him at an event in Fort Madison, Iowa, to suggest he ask a question about the senator standing up to President Bush on Iraq war funding at an event.

Mitchell, a 32-year-old minister, said he was not and had never been a Clinton supporter and stressed that he had moved to Illinois since the April 2nd event and, so, could not participate in the caucuses. He said being asked to ask a certain question was not the way things were supposed to go…

…The Clinton campaign’s Mo Elleithee said earlier in the day that Mitchell and the staffer, Chris Hayler, were acquaintances.

“They knew each other and bumped into each other at the event,” Elleithee had said. “During the course of their conversation, the topic of Iraq came up. Our staffer suggested he ask a question. That’s all.”

Mitchell disputes Elleithee’s account. “That is incorrect,” Mitchell said. “I did not know him. I met him that day.”

You think the Netroots is going to go to war for you when you do this shit? After you basically called us all ‘assholes from Vermont’? No way.

But, if we bring up what a dishonest, loathsome campaign the Clintons are running, all of a sudden we are Hillary haters. That’s backwards. Hillary hates us. And she treats us with the same contempt that she treats those audiences to in Iowa. Even the press gets into the action. Look at Craig Crawford:

Here’s a question not even worth asking John Edwards right now because he would not really answer it: Do you dislike Hillary Rodham Clinton enough to ultimately abandon your own race and endorse Barack Obama if it comes to that ?…

…There is no such warmth when Edwards speaks of Clinton — so much so that it is not unthinkable that a loss in Iowa, where the 2004 vice presidential nominee has put the bulk of his effort, might prompt him to endorse Obama well before the Feb. 5 multi-state primaries when Clinton hopes to clinch the nomination.

Then we would finally find out just how much Edwards dislikes her.

Couldn’t be that Edwards is attacking Clinton because she voted for Kyl-Lieberman, and she is planting questions at townhall meetings. Couldn’t be that he is actually trying to win the nomination. No, his criticisms are strictly about his personal dislike for Hillary Clinton. Total bullshit.

I don’t hate Hillary Clinton. She hates us. Or, at least, her consultants do. And her consultants are running the (Potemkin Village) of a show.