Really, Mrs. Clinton?  He can't win?

Let's just accept for the moment that Hillary Clinton probably did tell Bill Richardson that Barack Obama couldn't win the White House.  When you are in a two-candidate race, and you say things like "we need a candidate who can win in November," there is a thin line- a mighty thin line- between "I can win" and "he can't."  So despite her denials, I'm going to have to go with my gut on this and take ABC News' word over Hillary's- she's trying to smear him with superdelegates by telling them that Obama is an electoral lost cause.

But the worst part of it is that it is a downright lie.  And she knows it.  Oh Hillary, how wrong thou art.  Let me count the ways:

First and foremost, Barack Obama is a fundraising titan.  Not one single candidate in this election cycle- not Hillary Clinton, not John McCain- has even approached the success of the young Illinois Senator.  With new reports that his fundraising totals for March will exceed $40 million, it's becoming apparent that Obama's freight train of financial support isn't slowing any time soon.  Mark my word: the individuals running Barack's finance operations will be the most sought after consultants and advisor come 2012.  That being said, let me ask you this: knowing the importance of money in any electoral contest, who would you rather have?  The one guy who can put together a dominating war chest?  Or the woman who had to loan herself $5 million dollars just to keep her campaign afloat?

But it's more than just money.  Policywise, Hillary Clinton is out of step with 90% of working middle class Americans.  Despite her current claim that she never backed it, Clinton's support of the North American Free Trade Agreement (which made outsourcing US jobs a no-brainer for corporations who care more about their bottom line than their employees) is well-documented.  In his book Take This Job and Ship It, Senator Byron Dorgan of North Dakota cited NAFTA as one of the key pieces of legislation still burdening American workers today.  And Clinton knew that workers would be hurt, disregarding the vociferous objections of their unions. In her own memoir, Living History, Clinton wrote, "although unpopular with the Unions, expanding trade opportunities was an important goal of the Administration," even at the expense thousands of American jobs.  To this day, her closest and most visible advisor, Bill Clinton, continues to defend NAFTA and the effect it has had on the American economy.  The San Francisco Chronicle said Clinton's stance on NAFTA was "clearly a flip-flop."  You have to ask yourslef, would Hillary Clinton honestly work to undo one of the most "important victories," as she herself called it, of her husband's White House?

Now, take what you know about Hillary on free trade, and look at the states that have been battlegrounds in the last several elections: Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Florida.  Two of those three states (PA and OH) are industrial powerhouses.  Cities like Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Cincinatti, and Cleveland are fed by the factories, refineries, and foundries that employ their citizens.  If the Democratic candidate is someone who favors a policy that will likely cost many of them their jobs, who do you think they will support?  The former First Lady, or the war hero?  To win those states, Democrats must have a candidate who supports fair trade (Obama: check), and who will amend NAFTA to benefit American workers (again, Obama: check).

Then there's the issue of the South.  The Democratic strategy over the last two presidential elections has failed.  The mantra: skip the Midwest and South, count on winning the typical Democratic strongholds on the West Coast and in New England, and force the Republicans to fight pitched battles in the three battleground states mentioned above.  Whoever wins two of those three wins the White House.  But as our last two losses have shown, it's simply too risky- both times, Democrats lost Ohio and Florida.  If you're a Democrat, and you want to know why we haven't been able to get one of your own in the White House, go get this book: Foxes in the Henhouse: How Republicans Stole the South and the Heartland by Democratic strategists Mudcat Sanders and Steve Jarding.  If there is one main point of the book, it's this: to simply forsake and not campaign at all in the South and America's Heartland is both immoral (on the grounds that doing so is denying the voice of the freedom-loving, hard-working people there) and strategically illogical (why would you not contest those electoral votes???).  Sanders and Jarding argue that putting forward a candidate who can not (or will not try) to win in those regions is a lost cause.

Let's be honest, with the possible exception of Arkansas, Hillary can't win there, and she isn't going to try.  Her idea of "relating" to people there is to don a new accent and drop a few Bible verses when she goes (flashback to the infamous Selma trip).  But Barack Obama has demonstrated widespread support throughout the South, stringing impressive victories one, after the other, after the other.  In all honesty, who do you believe has the best chance of snagging Mississippi and its 9 electoral votes, or North Carolina and its 15?  The guy who put up huge numbers there and drew thousands of new voters?  Or the woman who got laughed out of town for trying to convince Southerners that they should vote for her because she's just like them?  Her actions there were dishonest and dispicable, a slap in the face to the respectable Americans who went out to hear her talk about the issues, and instead witnessed a mockery of their intelligence.

The simple fact is that this is not going to be an easy contest for Barack Obama.  There are prejudices to overcome, people to convince that despite his short years in federal offices, he's got the policies and the vision to bring positive change and real results to Washington.  Obama said it himself: "the easiest path to the presidency [is not] 'I want to be an African-American man named Barack Obama.'"  But when it comes to policy, strategy, and performance, Hillary has it all wrong: the real concern rests with her.

She can't win, folks.  She can not win.