The Hill reports that Hillary Clinton is spending a fortune in New York even though there is no way she’ll lose:

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D) spent nearly $7 million from her Senate campaign account last month running for reelection in New York.

The figure ranks among the most ever spent by a Senate candidate in such a short period, and many New Yorkers cannot even name her opponent.

Clinton’s onslaught is drawing comparisons to George W. Bush’s 1998 gubernatorial race in Texas, when he outspent his opponent 4-to-1 and used his big victory as a springboard to the presidency.

An overwhelming win would help a Clinton presidential campaign, chiefly by allowing her to say she can appeal to independent and conservative voters. It would dampen criticism that she is too polarizing to win in the 2008 general election.

The reason she’s doing this is clear. There are serious questions about her electability as a presidential candidate. And her performance in New York in 2000 was not impressive, as I wrote:

First of all, her 55%-43% win was not exactly a landslide. As the Almanac of American Politics 2002 points out, Chuck Schumer beat Al D’Amato by an almost identical margin of 55%-44% in the 1998 race for New York’s other Senate seat, and Hillary was riding the coattails of Al Gore, who won the state 60%-35%. According to Barone and company, when you break it down by region, she won New York City 74%-25%, lost in the suburbs 53%-45%, and lost upstate 51%-47%. The latter two numbers are pretty good, but again, compare her to Schumer — he won New York City 76%-23%, lost the suburbs 51%-49% and lost upstate 53%-45%. The figures are almost identical.

The obvious conclusion is that Hillary did about as well as your average Democrat in a Democrat-leaning state. While things could have gone much worse given how polarizing she was, it proves almost nothing about her ability to win over voters in the the battleground states of the industrial Midwest, let alone the South.

I’m sure she will end up winning by a huge margin, but a landslide against a nothing candidate in a Democratic state in a highly favorable political environment proves very little.