MsCharisma of Maryland on the "Bill Goes Insane" diary said "He is so obviously jealous of Obama." Truer words were never spoken, I believe that jealousy is the real source of the vitriol toward Obama from the Clinton camp. They cannot be reasonable or rational because jealousy at this level is inherently unreasonable and irrational. And I think that jealousy has been nakedly on display in recent days.
Many people (including me) believe that the Clintons sandbagged Al Gore in 2000 in order to protect Hillary's chance to run for President. Vanity Fair, the same magazine that WJC is all upset about now, published an article last November that directly supports the idea that Bill was more concerned with jumpstarting Hillary's political future than helping Gore with his presidential campaign. They were obviously more personally invested in winning that Senate seat for Hillary than about keeping the White House in the hands of the Democrats. Does anyone recall any outrage from the Clinton camp after the unbearable wrongness of Bush v. Gore?
Then look at the actions of the Clinton team toward Dean in 2004-2005. HRC was reluctant to challenge a sitting president, even one who had already been revealed as Worst President Ever, and I don;t blame her for wanting more time in the Senate to bolster her credentials. But many people (including me) believe that the Clintons helped bring down Dean because they feared his election (or the election of any Democrat!) would prevent Hillary from having her chance to run in 2008. It's one thing to run against a Republican incumbent, but to run against a Democratic incumbent would reveal that they care more about personal ambition than the future of the D party as a whole.
Then they were bent out of shape about Howard Dean's election as DNC Chair. I felt there was some jealousy directed from the Clintons toward Dean at the time, because he beat the establishment candidate the Clintons supported, and after his election as DNC Chair pundits were calling him the most powerful man in the party. Headlines reading "It's His Party" just rubbed salt in the wound. Even after Dean's DNC election, Clinton surrogates openly laughed at the 50 state strategy and criticized Dr. Dean for sending money and other resources to places like Montana, Kansas, Colorado, Louisiana and Missisippi, predicting he would go down in flames. But many people (including me!) were grateful that Dean was taking charge of rebuilding the party—whatever power the Clintons did have, they had never used it for party building. As most of us here know, we lost seats during Clinton's two terms. Ds lost control of the House and the Senate. Terry McAuliffe raised money, but spent it to benefit specific individuals rather than the party as a whole. Can anyone name ANYTHING the Clinton cadre has accomplished since they left the White House that benefitted the party as a whole? Most of what they have done seems designed to pile up favors as a way to advance HRC's political aspirations. WJC and HRC liked to imagine they were the most powerful people in the Democratic Party, but in 2006 Dean's vision and leadership were completely vindicated: the 50 state strategy worked after Clintonistas had disparaged it; Dean's focus on party building instead of incumbent protection gave us more incumbents to protect; and we took back control of House and the Senate when almost no one in the DLC wing of the party thought it could be done.
Now the Clinton jealousy has been transferred to Obama. HRC is probably kicking herself for being a help to him when he first arrived in the Senate. Lots of people were already talking about Obama as a presidential candidate, but HRC and WJC underestimated him. They never imagined he would ignore their pleas for him to wait his turn. After all, weren't they the most powerful people in the Democratic party? What newcomer could make a presidential run against their wishes?
They started with big money, but Obama raised more. They started with the black vote, and Obama swept it away from them. They started with the superdelegate advantage, but even twisting arms based on decades of friendship could not stop key supers from endorsing Obama, even back when the race was still in doubt. They went into states with big leads, but the more people saw of O the more they liked him. He stayed cool calm and collected even after they threw the kitchen sink at him. His national campaign ran like clockwork with no internal dissension spilling over into the press. He was always one step ahead of them and made them look incompetent in the area that was supposed to be their greatest strength. He beat them using the 50 state strategy they dismissed as impossible. Not only that, Obama is younger than they, good looking, and widely admired as a man of character, common sense and integrity. Even though he had the same absent father issues as WJC, he managed to process it in a way that left him with fewer insecurities, better self-control and a comfortableness in his own skin that proves he does not derive his core identity from the ups and downs of politics. Maybe that creates the most jealousy of all.
HRC has dreamed about being president her whole life. O stopped her. WJC saw himself as the rightful heir to the Kennedy legacy. O changed that too. O is going to be the 2008 D nominee for president and he has done it without begging for loyalty from people who owed him political favors, without kissing butt to DLC power brokers, and without selling out on the war, as the Clintons had to do. Whether he wins the general election or not, Obama is now the most powerful man in the Democratic Party. More powerful than the immediate past president and his wife, who in the process of trying to defeat him destoyed their reputation and their legacy. So if they are jealous, that would be a natural human response to losing power and prestige they thought would be theirs for the rest of their lives, and to someone who is smarter, more personable, more vibrant, more self-confident, and more politically savvy—ways they never expected anyone would be able to beat them.