Meghan O’Rourke (who, full dis­clo­sure, edited the piece I wrote for Slate last winter) writes this today about Hillary Clinton’s unwill­ing­ness to “trust…the mes­sage of rev­o­lu­tion embod­ied in her candidacy”:

But the para­dox is that in taking the safe tack she thought made her more elec­table, she actu­ally made her­self less electable.

It’s a good gen­eral point, vari­a­tions on which I expect we’ll hear more and more as the HRC post­mortems roll in over the coming weeks. Here’s my ver­sion, which has to do with her Iraq war vote:

I’ve been amazed during this pri­mary cam­paign at how little dis­cus­sion has dealt with the fact–no, that’s too strong, let’s call it a hypoth­e­sis–that Clinton’s deci­sion to vote in favor of autho­riz­ing the Iraq war was made with one eye on her upcom­ing pres­i­den­tial run.

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