Could Hillary be any more aggravating?

Hillary Clinton went on TV this morning in her last shot to explain herself before Tuesday's big primaries (Indiana and North Carolina: 187 delegates). She sat down with George Stephanopoulos of ABC news (and Bill's White House), and just blew me away. Here are some prime parts of the transcript:

STEPHANOPOULOS: Economists say that's not going to happen. They say this is going to go straight into the profits of the oil companies. They're not going to actually lower their prices....Can you name one economist, a credible economist who supports the [temporary] suspension [of the gas tax]?
CLINTON: Well, you know, George, I think we've been for the last seven years seeing a tremendous amount of government power and elite opinion basically behind policies that haven't worked well for the middle class and hard-working Americans....I'll tell you what, I'm not going to put my lot in with economists, because I know if we get it right, if we actually did it right, if we had a president who used all the tools of the presidency, we would design it in such a way that it would be implemented effectively...

WTF? So Clinton says that all economists are "the elite" and have interests that conflict with the rest of America? Is she really pretending that she can set economic policy using her "kitchen table" knowledge? And what does she mean by "all the tools"? Is she suggesting price controls, because it sure sounds like she is (and this is in line with her proposals for the mortgage mess)?

I think I may despise her as much as those Republicans who detest the "elite" biologists and their fancy evolutionary theory...when "common sense" tells us that species cannot change from one type to another.

Here's another good clip:

I'm asked a question about what I would do if Iran attacked our ally [Israel], a country that many of us have a great deal of, you know, connection with and feeling for, for all kinds of reasons.

For all kinds of reasons? Is she suggesting that Israel is somehow special, as opposed to our other allies? Is she speaking in code, or just rambling? It almost sounds like she's trying to bring the ~~"second coming"~~ zionist crowd into the Democratic foreign policy tent.

re: the "2nd coming" crowd: I suspect she's doing exactly that.

Between her thinly-veiled belligerence, use of right-wing pseudo-populist talking points, and dog whistles to racists, I've come to the conclusion that she's no longer even running as a Democrat. Her campaign now is more a message to conservatives, saying to them "look, you're on a bad cycle here, you're not going to get a white male conservative loyalist in the White House, I'm your next best hope", simultaneously trying to capitalize on buyers remorse about McCain while preemptively painting Obama as some sort of wild-eyed commie.

I just want to broaden my characterization of the interest group from "second-coming" to "zionist". Whether the zionists are Christian or Jewish, I don't consider their ideology to have a legitimate place in American foreign policy. (that's not to say that I have any problem with the fact of Israel's existence and the Israeli people's quest for security in the land where they currently live)

(Read the transcript.)

I'm starting to agree with b psycho. At least in the primary right now, Hillary Clinton has been dependent on Republican support since Ohio/Texas to give her the numbers she needs to keep on going. I expect that Republican support will similarly help her Indiana. She seems to have moved to dog whistle politics to appeal to Republicans to at least finish off Obama, even if she has no chance of winning them in the fall.

The last few cycles have had a candidate of the working class crush the more affluent creative class candidate (Gore-Bradley, Kerry-Dean), and then go on to have horrible problems in the general in appealing to the working class. Is it at all possible that the working class Democrats left in the political process are the most out of touch with their working class peers and tend to flock to the candidates that are most likely to alienate working class voters in general?