As the news of Hillary Clinton's defeat rolls off the wire (it may, for the record, be greatly exaggerated -- see later in the article), it's fair to say that she has noone to blame but herself for her downfall.

See, Hillary made the tremendously fatal mistake of playing the experience card. Right now as the peasants are lining up with pitchforks at the White House gates, experience is the last thing they want to see in a Presidential candidate. They want to at least hold on to the illusion that their candidate is a political outsider, even if they're anything but (although they're not willing to ditch their party affiliation to do it), and they're enamored with the idea that Obama is only a couple of short years removed from the Illinois State House.

Hillary actually had the resume to portray herself as an outsider, but it seems she was ill advised by advisors who wanted her to play up her experience as a leader with a long resume. They were banking basically on the war to save her campaign, when public sentiment appears to be strongly against the war.

Obama, on the other hand, played his charisma to the hilt. He survived a rather nasty stream of attacks (and, in the process, Hillary and company gave McCain the ammo he needs to pretend to hold the high ground while still undermining Obama's credibility), but as recent votes indicated, charisma trumps fact any day of the week.

Still, I'm not among those foolish enough to "stick a fork" in Hillary. In fact, I have to acknowledge that the MSM's coronation of Obama may work against them. By portraying the primaries as won, they may bring Hillary's supporters out in drove in the remaining primaries while encouraging Obama's supporters to stay home. And because the current numbers are based on the superdelegate count, which is subject to change, if Hillary sweeps the remaining primaries, some of Obama's team may jump ship with their uncommitted votes.

While I'm not exactly enthused by the prospect of a Hillary presidency, the fact is, if she happens to pull off the unthinkable and make it, we'll get through it as we've gotten through everything else. And while Hillary isn't the lesser of two evils, being the equal of three evils (the other two being, umm, Obama and McCain), she's as good, unfortunately, as we're likely to get given the choices we have, unless a third party candidate (Mike Gravel, anyone? Anyone?) pulle off the even more unthinkable.

But if the Hillary ship is sunk, when she looks back, she should blame noone but herself for the defeat.