The Crying Game

What do you do in a presidential campaign where mean spirited attacks are booed by members of your own party. How do you defend yourself when an opponent has no specific message to pick apart. If you're Hillary Clinton, you cry.

I'm not talking about the break down in your hotel room kind of cry either. No, you pull a "Why are they picking on me?" public, Edmund Muskie type voice breaking, message laden cry. However, unlike Muskie, the first major female American candidate did it and it just might have worked.

Do I doubt the spontaneity of that moment? Obviously. Bill Clinton was the king of the quivering lipped, lily livered, watery-eyed moment. I still remember the time Bill Clinton was leaving a funeral and was captured whipping up tears when he saw a camera pointed at him. But where that emotionality made him look like a big gooey mess, crying merely makes Hillary human.

This is where the Obama machine may run out of steam. Hope is a powerful message, but hope tempered with misery is a Democratic message. Hillary is ready. Ready to take money from people she doesn't like and give it to people who support her.