It’s been surfacing recently, speculation that Hillary Clinton is no longer trying to win the 2008 elections – she’s gunning for the 2012 elections. And she’s doing it by trying to destroy Obama so badly that he’ll lose to John McCain.

That’s interesting speculation and should bear some thought. McCain is 71, the oldest Presidential candidate in history. It would seem a safe bet, morbid as it sounds, to assume he’ll be a one-term president by either electoral selection or natural selection. Obama is different. Young and coming from the same party, Barack has all the makings of a two-term President. Worse, he’s, in many ways, a single-run candidate, much like John Edwards was in 2004. You can only run as an outsider and an agent of change once. After that, you’ve been initiated and become part of the system, missteps build up and voters get disenfranchised by your decisions. Obama’s campaign would have to, at the least, be dramatically retooled to work in 2012, in addition to the fact that he would have to overcome the albatross of having run and lost the first time. Obama of 2012 would be far less formidable than Obama of 2008 unless he wins the Presidency.

Enter the Clintons.

Hillary knows very well that her chances of winning this year’s nomination are nearly 100-to-1. She’s running on the twisted concept that electability is somehow separate from popular support and that she, not Obama, is the candidate of choice in this matter, never mind that for that to happen, the “Supers” would have to overturn the popular vote which would most likely drive many centrists straight into McCain’s grateful arms. That is something none of them is willing to do. Yet, neither are they willing to intervene in the race because they fear the backlash from long-time Clintonistas who would see the ditching of their hero as a betrayal of the democratic party…nevermind the popular vote (see, I told you partisanship isn’t dead). So Obama wins by default, unless a nuke lands on him.

However, if Obama LOSES the general elections, he’ll be mortally wounded as a candidate. He will have to start from scratch, with his wings clipped and a damaged reputation. Worse, the Clintons could easily spin his loss as no one’s fault but his own…everything the Clintons hit him with would have been thrown at him by the “vast right wing conspiracy” anyway, goes that argument that conveniently ignores the fact that it was Clinton’s self-serving stubbornness that allowed McCain to choose the battlefield and prepare the terrain on his terms, while alienating large portions of the Democratic base from Obama. When Obama loses, Clinton will be left without a challenger for the 2012 elections. So what if the Democratic party is destroyed along the way…the Clintons can rebuild it in their image.

What could be sweeter? The destruction of Obama would not only discredit the brightest political prospect of the generation (not to mention, the first of the “Millenials”), it would simultaneously discredit the Kennedy wing of the Democratic party, leaving the work of picking up the pieces to none other than…Bill Clinton. So she’s on scorched-earth policy, and damn the consequences. Damn everything but her – and his – heritage. Might the Democratic party end up an aristocracy under the patronage of the Clinton bloodline?

And I thought King George was a scary thought.