Her comments about the Reagans having been leaders in opening up a public discussion on AIDS were inexcusable, but in some ways even worse; they were bizarre. As Dallasdoc pointed out in his extremely powerful Daily Kos Diary The Wound Has Been Reopened: " Imagine if Barack Obama had presided over 7 years of an Ebola plague which killed over 40,000 Americans without giving a speech on it — even now." Hillary Clinton wasn't just an average American while the AIDS epidemic exploded during the Reagan Presidency - she was living in the Governor's mansion in Arkansas where her husband was a Democratic Governor responsible for helping protect the health of millions of its citizens. An adequate government response to a lethal epidemic, or a lack of same, should very much have been on Hillary's mind then - daily. How do you get totally twisted on the facts regarding something like that when the lack of an adequate federal response once was killing your own constituents? But it doesn't stop there. Polls show a number of state races starting to tighten, including one CBS poll showing Sanders edging into a lead in Illinois. Bernie drew a crowd to his rally in Tampa Florida more than 10 times larger than the one Hillary attracted on the same day in the same city. And it looks like Clinton is doing what she often resorts to when she starts getting nervous about upcoming results; she goes negative, but she did so this time in a way that made herself look foolish rather than Bernie looking bad. Where was Bernie when she fought for health care she asked? Standing right behind her comes one piece of photographic evidence - to go with another personal gift photo that she had signed to Bernie thanking him for his support on health care, at the time. When Hillary goes negative on Bernie she ends up driving up her own negatives, something she can ill afford to do given her high unfavorables, but she just can't help it it seems.
And then there is that other thing she does when she starts worrying about losing an upcoming primary. She tries to wrap herself in the issues that Bernie is running on, hoping to steal some of his thunder. But Saturday Night Live just called Hillary out on that brilliantly, in a spoof political ad that literally had her morphing into Bernie Sanders. Ouch. To make matters worse the real Hillary only offered up a pale imitation in real life, and the real Bernie promptly raised the ante on her. Hillary wants to tweek a provision of the TPP related to auto imports, but Bernie challenged her to join him in fully rejecting yet another disastrous international trade deal. And the once industrial Mid West seems to be resonating with Bernie's stance on that. To complicate things even further for Hillary, Bernie is also challenging Hillary to distance herself from unpopular Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, something she can not easily do which puts her at a disadvantage in the Democratic primary.
But that's not all. Just when Clinton most needs to blunt any momentum for Sanders going into the Tuesday races, suddenly the daily news cycle coverage has expanded beyond "all Trump, all day" to include, you guessed it, Bernie Sanders. Bernie is on message, standing strong as he turns aside a fresh slew of attacks on him now from a rattled Donald Trump, who is trying to blame Sanders for the ugliness his own crypto-fascist behavior at rallies has spawned. That drama should take us at least into Tuesday when the actual voting begins. Until then the optics are mostly Trump vs Sanders in the Presidential race - not exactly the type of framing that Hillary Clinton needs right now.