'Poor Hillary' Refrain Has Hillary-Like Staying Power

There’s Hillary Clinton, writes Libby Copeland in the Washington Post, and then there’s “Poor Hillary.” Though Barack Obama destroyed her “inevitability,” she continues to quixotically pursue the Democratic nomination, touting the power of “grit” against arithmetic, and moving op-ed writers, news anchors and conservative talking heads to raise another chorus of “poor Hillary”—“an attempt," Copeland notes, "at death by condescension.”

This alter ego speaks to an essential truth, Copeland writes: “Clinton's wounds have always defined her. The haters are always on the lookout for her comeuppance, and the lovers love her more for what she has endured.” But this is not the real Hillary, an eminently capable pol, “made of steel,” per John Edwards—and not at all in need of our sympathy. (More Hillary Clinton stories.)