`Nobody Saw It Coming’: Why Hillary’s `Clintastrophe’ in Michigan?

It is significant that Hillary Clinton, after a weekend spent mouthing absurd defenses of Barack Obama and Wall Street, lost a state primary March 9 in Michigan, in which polls had shown her 13-21% ahead just days earlier. She now faces more primaries in formerly-industrial Midwest states with large Democratic constituencies on March 16, and continuing to campaign as Obama apologist, as Wall Street insider, will get the same results. Her campaign should rightly be in panic.

Clearly a strong backlash against actions by Clinton and Obama took place among the Michigan voters over the last long weekend before the primary; and as major political media have immediately noted, the same thing may happen March 16 in Ohio, where Clinton is also given double-digit leads in the polls.

Clinton’s catastrophe was Obama.

Clinton’s linked herself to Obama in the final weekend’s debate, and in other campaign actions; and made the foolish public statement that Obama had taken more Wall Street money than any candidate in history (quite true), and then had pushed through the Dodd-Frank Act. Clinton claimed this meant Wall Street’s money did not corrupt! Voters showed they recognized the opposite: She was tying herself to the despised Obama and to Wall Street at the same time.

Then, Obama’s primary-eve stunt for Clinton — holding a major White House event to promote the “success” of the Dodd-Frank Act — put the nail in her coffin. The winner was not the surprised Sanders; it was the anti-Obama, anti-Wall Street backlash in Democratic constituencies.

Democratic officials in Congress and elsewhere know very well that the Party is split down the middle nationally, between Wall Street money and public outrage at Wall Street. The split is, essentially, between the Dodd-Frank Act and a restored Glass-Steagall Act, which will start the shutdown of Wall Street.

In meetings March 1-3, a large number of Democratic Congress Members and their staffs told EIR they were acutely aware of this “Dodd-Frank vs. Glass-Steagall” split, and that it was also in the center of the Presidential primary campaign.

But thinking citizens, considering the future of their nation and of mankind, cannot limit themselves to being part of a “backlash.” In the decades since America last had a mission and an optimistic purpose — above all in the space program, from JFK — millions of voters have been dumbed down to such “backlash” existence.

We have to mobilize to force through that alternative, and to force Obama — the “Nobel Prize killer” and the killer of America’s space program — out of office. Much more than Hillary Clinton’s failing campaign is at stake.