Maureen Dowd has a great piece in the NY Times today, titled Hillary or Nobody?, in which she talks about the idea that the Clinton’s are down to a “me or nobody” stance on the Democratic primary. And while Maureen may make some valid points in the article, I just don’t see it quite the same way.

First, it is well known that Sen. Hillary Clinton will say anything and do anything in order to win the nomination. From stretching the truth about her First Lady agenda, to downright yelling and going totally negative on Barack Obama, she has tried to play every card she can in this process, and it hasn’t worked.

My guess is that this is really it for Sen. Clinton. She knows that if she can’t obtain the presidency in this cycle, her chances of ever getting it are really slim. Barring a single 4 year term by either McCain or Obama, which would allow her to run in 2012, the end has come and obviously she is having a hard time facing that scenario.

The negative attacks over the last few weeks have turned voters off to her appeal of ever being president. Current Obama supporters are unlikely to ever vote for her should she somehow win the nomination. That leads me to believe that the reverse of exactly what she is saying has happened.

She continues to profess that Obama is not electable in the general election against McCain, however, I believe that it is actually her that is not electable in the general. Obama has the ability to reel in voters from all sides and parties, where Mrs. Clinton just simply cannot do that. She is far too polarizing to ever be able to depend on the Independent and Republican voters that Obama would be able to capture in the general election.

The idea that she is simply roughing up Obama in hopes that he would lose to McCain is quite disturbing, yet not surprising, coming from Mrs. Clinton. When it comes down to the bottom line, she does not care about the Democratic party. She will never put the party ahead of her own agenda and ahead of her dangerous power-hungry mentality, even though she has repeatedly expressed throughout the process that we need to be unified for November.

I was really hoping that this primary would stay focused on the issues and that the negative attacks would really stay out of this, and they probably would have, if Sen. Clinton were in the same spot as Obama. But, as we have clearly seen in this process, Sen. Clinton is no different than any other candidate and no different than any other previous campaign. When all else fails, go negative and just simply try to beat your opponent down to an unelectable stance.

Well, I don’t think that is going to work this time. The voters can see that coming a mile away, and they can instantly identify it as just another candidate, doing the same old Washington way of campaigning.

If you can’t campaign and engage the people differently, then how will you ever run this country differently? You won’t, which is why Obama is exactly where he is in this race.