After moderator Stephanopoulis claimed the gotcha questions dominating Wednesday’s debate were apropos because they covered controversies that took place since the previous debate, I remained skeptical. After all, the false Bosnia sniper scandal also took place in that interim nd where were the gotcha questions there? So almost every gotcha question was aimed at Barack, not one of the Clintons, whose backs he rode to his current prominence. Coincidence? Sure, George, sure…

And Clinton followed her debate edge with a fresh gaffe today, attacking the Democratic base:

At a small closed-door fundraiser after Super Tuesday, Sen. Hillary Clinton blamed what she called the “activist base” of the Democratic Party — and MoveOn.org in particular — for many of her electoral defeats, saying activists had “flooded” state caucuses and “intimidated” her supporters, according to an audio recording of the event obtained by The Huffington Post.

“Moveon.org endorsed [Sen. Barack Obama] — which is like a gusher of money that never seems to slow down,” Clinton said to a meeting of donors. “We have been less successful in caucuses because it brings out the activist base of the Democratic Party. MoveOn didn’t even want us to go into Afghanistan. I mean, that’s what we’re dealing with. And you know they turn out in great numbers. And they are very driven by their view of our positions, and it’s primarily national security and foreign policy that drives them. I don’t agree with them. They know I don’t agree with them. So they flood into these caucuses and dominate them and really intimidate people who actually show up to support me.”

MoveOn responded:

In a statement to The Huffington Post, MoveOn’s Executive Director Eli Pariser reacted strongly to Clinton’s remarks: “Senator Clinton has her facts wrong again. MoveOn never opposed the war in Afghanistan, and we set the record straight years ago when Karl Rove made the same claim. Senator Clinton’s attack on our members is divisive at a time when Democrats will soon need to unify to beat Senator McCain. MoveOn is 3.2 million reliable voters and volunteers who are an important part of any winning Democratic coalition in November. They deserve better than to be dismissed using Republican talking points.”

Just when Gallup showed her narrowing the gap nationwide post-debate, in direct contrast to a Newsweek poll showing she was losing ground up to the debate. Her supporters had finally been heartened and now that afterglow is fully dissipated.

After that false claim about Afghanistan - hell, most online progressives have said all along that we should continue the pursuit of Bin Laden - I now abandon my former position that Clinton should stay in the race as long as she saw fit to, without party officials or any other politician asking her to step aside for the sake of party unity.

Here’s the deal, Senator Clinton: you’re not going to win enough pledged delegates. You’re not going to convince the remaining majority of superdelegates. The people who decide these things are us, the party’s base of active primary voters. It will be us who complete the job of defeating your endeavor and you’ve made that a fait accompli with your dishonest remarks that now try to slur all of us who’ve fought against this damnable war in Iraq since well before the first shot was fired. Even a majority of Congrssional Democrats voted against the AUMF while supporting the effort against the Taliban and Al Qaida.

Portray the results ahead as anti-Clinton bias or even misogyny, if you need to to salve the wounds of your political defeat. The reality is, most of the activist base ultimately turned against you because of your arrogance and incompetence. You refused to apologize for your AUMF vote, you blew the health care plan in ‘94 and had no replacement 13 years later at the outset of this candidacy, undermining your claim that your experience and compassion amounted to a hill of beans. You went back on the united pledge to penalize states that moved up their primary date. Please, quit blaming your problems on everyone but yourself.

I don’t trust you to work for party unity even after the dawdlers recognize that Obama’s the nominee. Too many of your supporters have indicated otherwise to pollsters and I fully expect enough of them to follow through, damaging the country to make their point that it’s only going to be you, or McCain can have it.

Kindly go away; you’ve done quite enough. We still intend to work for a win by our qualified nominee and we don’t need your gnatbuzz around pestering people you once had ready to work for you. Bush and the GOP have always been what this primary race was really about and it just became clear that your interests were different, and in the end, you made everything all about you.

Deal with the result, which judgment was, indeed, all about you: your actions and choices and destructive games. And finally, you even pissed me off, which very few can do.

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