Clinton’s Rove-ish eleventh hour osama ad (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azVAkWfJPZ4) worked. Pennsylvania voters who made up their minds in the week before the primary favored her overwhelmingly, just like Ohio voters sought her maternal (if a little awkward… and a little uncomfortable) embrace after she freaked ‘em out with the Red Phone ad. The method is so simple and so familiar I’m shocked it still works: show the kids a scary movie then put them to bed with a fairy tale.

How and why voters respond to this strategy, when their frontal lobes know it leads to bad policy is a question for greater minds. Here’s my question: why does no one bat an eye when she casually suggests a new cold war strategy of Iran-containment that would make Wolfowitz blush? (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abJ2jbXasNg). Are we just less inclined to notice when a female democrat exhibits this kind of insane belligerence or are we all so used to her poll-tested self construction (and re-construction) that we shrug it off as more posturing, like her whisky swilling or gun-toting.