"...Clinton seemed to be campaigning in an alternate reality..."

The normally über-left liberal Salon.com describes the eerieness that is now the Clinton campaign, using phrases like "she might as well have been on another planet."

Seriously, I can't do this justice. You must read the full account to get a sense of what a sideshow it must have appeared.

If Saturday Night Live * doesn't do a parody of what this scene must have looked like, they don't deserve to be on the air:

For six hours Saturday, as her close advisors battled in a D.C. hotel ballroom to salvage some vague hope of rounding up enough delegates to stop Barack Obama from emerging as the Democratic nominee for president, Clinton hung out on the back of a souped-up pickup truck, chugging along at 20 miles per hour through the streets of San Juan's suburbs. She was just a few yards behind a semi loaded with several dozen giant speakers, blaring campaign slogans and theme songs loud enough to set off car alarms just by driving by. It was her final get-out-the-vote gambit in Puerto Rico, a full-on caravana, just like the local politicians do (and, as an announcer kept shouting over the P.A. system at Puerto Rican voters, "the way you would want" her to campaign). The legendary salsero Willie Colón sang, over and over again: "34 years of experience" -- the sound truck blasting the minute-long song nearly 50 times an hour, while occasionally switching to a reggaeton campaign anthem or a different salsa tune. "In any emergency, I'm going with Hillary, for her conviction and eloquence." It was catchier in Spanish, at least the first 100 times you heard it.

Ouch.

One press aide, usually deskbound in Arlington, Va., suddenly turned up in San Juan to help shuttle reporters on and off buses. Another let her battery-drained BlackBerry sit uselessly for most of the drive Saturday, plugging it in only when actually reading and replying to e-mail became more appealing than listening to "Hillary Clinton Para Presidenta," yet again.

Ouch again.

If you got past the ear-splitting volume and the mind-numbing repetition, the Saturday afternoon caravan was a leisurely meander through the suburbs in the tropics, with little for anyone on the Clinton payroll to do -- and little for Clinton to do, for that matter -- besides smile and wave at potential voters on the side of the road.

Double-ouch.

"I was so happy to be standing up in the pickup truck, waving at all of the people on the streets and in the cars who were driving by," Clinton said..."It was the most fun I think I've ever had campaigning anywhere."

I cannot wait to see Amy Poehler* deliver that line from the back of a dusty pickup truck on SNL.

Then the coup de grâce:

But most major presidential candidates wouldn't have spent six hours dancing to Willie Colón on the back of a pickup truck near the end of a close national campaign that they still thought they could win.

Good point.


*


And as if that wasn't enough, check out this first-hand account of Bill Clinton's latest eruption. Another doozy with such soon-to-be classic Slick Willy quotes as this one:

...this has been the most rigged press coverage in modern history...

Honestly, I just don't grasp how Hillary expects anyone to believe she and/or Bill won't erupt a hundred times worse than this once the nomination is finally, officially beyond her clutching grasp?

Then, I suppose, after this year, we'll all just have to break our backs paying for Obama's way of governing, a full $69 BILLION A YEAR MORE than Hillary would cost this country.