During the long drive from Philly back to North Carolina, I subjected my family to the C-SPAN Radio broadcast of the latest Democratic debate. I don’t have anything to add about the substance of the debate itself, which sounded more or less same as all the previous ones,
but I was again annoyed by Hillary Clinton’s insistence on taking credit for her husband’s political victories:

Well, I don’t think Karl Rove’s going to endorse me. That becomes more and more obvious. But I find it interesting he’s so obsessed with me. And I think the reason is because [laughter] we know how to win. I mean, you know, I have been fighting against these people for longer than anybody else up here. I’ve taken them on and we’ve beaten them…

And the reason — the reason why we’re going to win is because we have a better vision for America, we know how to bring about change, and I know how to beat them.

Note how she slides from “we know how to win” to “I have been fighting” to “I’ve taken them on” to “we’ve beaten them” before concluding with “I know how to beat them.”

But as I wrote before, Hillary hasn’t won any impressive political victories on her own and it’s not clear that she can legitimately take credit for her husband’s:

Actually, it was Bill Clinton who knew how to take [conservatives] on. Hillary was not a “winner” but a presidential spouse/adviser whose public image and poor political instincts held her husband back. She only became a sympathetic figure who helped Bill after the Monica Lewinsky affair became public. And her only significant political victory was defeating Rick Lazio in 2000, a race in which she performed about as well as Chuck Schumer did in 1998. In short, her entire claim to being a “winner” is to do about as well as a generic Democrat in a Democratic-leaning state. It’s not so impressive.

On the other hand, her posturing is brilliant politically because none of her rivals would want to risk bringing Bill into the fray on her behalf. Plus Edwards and Obama also lack a compelling record of tough political victories. So Hillary can keep pushing the line without getting called on it.