Hillary hides behind her gender, proves herself no different from Dubya.

Somewhere, Susan B. Anthony, Eleanor Roosevelt and Molly Ivins (God bless their souls) are shaking their heads and wondering what all those years of blood, sweat and tears trying to win equality for women were for. By now most of us are familiar with last week's Democratic debate, during which Hillary Clinton stumbled on several key issues. To sum up those stumbles:

The criticisms of her positions (or lack thereof) offered up by Clinton's rivals at the debate were legitimate, and would have been leveled regardless of who she is or what her gender. But that didn't stop Mrs. Clinton's campaign web site from whining about having gotten "piled on" following her dismal performance last week. When push came to shove, when she found herself in a pickle of her own making, the best Hillary Clinton can do is hide behind her gender and play the victim.

This is a slap in the face to women everywhere. It is puerile, childish, an insult to everything the feminist movement is supposed to stand for. Oh to have a real woman running for president, like Stephanie Tubbs Jones, a woman of true principle! For what do we have in Hillary Clinton, who hides behind her gender when the going gets tough? Consider how like the craven, pathetic little boy in the White House Mrs. Clinton really is -- he who continually hides behind the flag; the soldiers he selfishly sent into harm's way; the "ass-kissing little chickenshit" he uses to lie for him before Congress, because he knows no one would believe him if he ever testified himself; the nearly three thousand dead who perished on 9/11/2001 as a result of his deliberate negligence.

This is the pathetic little boy Hillary Clinton chooses to emulate, during those times when she isn't emulating her husband -- himself a master of triangulation and parsing. If this is how she plans to win her political party's nomination to run for president, by whining her way out of criticism for her words and actions, then how can Clinton expect to take on the GOP nominee, who shall most assuredly be far worse in his attacks on her than any of her Democratic rivals.

There is a reason the Republican candidates feel comfortable running against her and not the other candidates, and it is this: no matter how skilled Hillary Clinton thinks she is at the politics of whining and faux outrage, the GOP is far more adept. For whining and expressing false outrage in order to distract from the issues at hand are tools that have served the GOP extremely well, and no Democrat can hope to match a Republican candidate in such a battle. Romney and Giuliani know that if Clinton is the nominee, they can successfully swiftboat her campaign into oblivion and the election (from their points of view) would be sure to go in their favor. If she thinks she can win by playing the helpless victim, she's in for a rude awakening.

The greatest danger in allowing candidates -- with help from their enablers in the corporate media -- to nominate themselves is that we are guaranteed to end up with ones who are fundamentally no different from those they seek to replace. On policy after policy, on issue after issue, Clinton has proven herself a pale imitation of the shrub. It is deeply disturbing that the next election will be between two candidates vying to prove who can be the better carbon copy of George W. Bush.

Consider her excuse for a health care plan, as outlined by The Nation, and how if such were enacted it would parallel the giveaway to the health care industry rammed through Congress that screwed up Medicare. Consider that, until last year, Clinton was the second-largest recipient of contributions from HMOs and pharmaceutical companies behind then-senator Rick Santorum. With the boy who had a certain bodily discharge named after him having been voted out of office, this makes Hillary the biggest recipient.

With the Bush-Cheney regime beating the drums of war against Iran, you'd think Hillary would have learned not to believe a word either of them has to say. Yet she instead parrots the hawkish rhetoric coming out of an almost thoroughly discredited White House. And, as demonstrated in the video, she says we will remain in Iraq for years to come in spite of American public support for withdrawal. And what are the chances that she'll cave in to pressure to keep the Bush tax cuts to the wealthy in place?

To those of you who think Hillary Clinton is fundamentally different from the shrub, I say this: you are, tragically, kidding yourselves. The fact is, Clinton is the candidate least likely to bring about the change America so desperately needs.