Poor Hillary

Poor Hillary. She's played by the rules, but she is no longer the media darling and presumptive Democatic nominee for president. This weekend, in a strangely anticlimactic moment, she did what political junkies have expected her to do since 1993: She announced her intent to run for president. While she didn't "stay home and bake cookies," Hillary did whatever else it took to get to this moment.

First she pushed her husband into national prominence, attempted to commandeer the national health care system (one-seventh of the American economy), stood by her philandering man and his humiliations, and attempted to carve a new identity for herself as a senator from New York (okay, she's not exactly from New York).

But instead of being lionized as the next president by a formerly compliant media, Hillary has seen the spotlight trained on Barack Obama, a telegenic, well-spoken, and completely inexperienced senator from Hillary's native Illinois.

While no one will say so openly, one of Obama's key selling points is his ethnicity. If you don't think so, just try to imagine a white with such a thin resume receiving the attention Obama has. Obama makes Dan Quayle look like an elder stateman. Expect the Democratic campaign to get nasty.

A former Hillary supporter who has decided to back Obama told a television journalist that Hillary is "too much of a politician." And what is Obama? In any case, the Hillary bandwagon appears to have hit a major pothole, and I'm almost tempted to feel sorry for her.

I said almost.