By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, March 28, 2008; 11:13 AM

If Hillary Clinton has lost the Huffington Post, has she lost the Democratic Party?

The liberal Web site published one Hillary-bashing piece after another yesterday, all of them tapping into an anger that she dares to remain in the race and criticize Barack Obama.

This is the new media narrative that the former first lady is confronting, that she is prolonging the agony and is just being selfish by refusing to pack it in.

I've read some pieces here and there saying it's not impossible for Hillary to prevail, or that there's no reason for her to fold her tent. But if there are commentators strongly pushing her candidacy at the moment, they've mostly escaped my notice.

This is a problem for HRC that goes beyond Obama's lead in pledged delegates. The entire race has now been framed around the contentious question of whether Hillary is mean or just delusional. Very few folks give her the benefit of the doubt as someone who's battling hard for a presidential nomination and still sees herself within striking distance. How many cable pundits have you heard speculate that if she can't win, she wants Obama to lose so she can run again in 2012? Who knows if that's true? After all, this year was the best shot she'd ever have at the White House, and her party has not exactly been kind to previous losers.

It's hard to dispute that the increasingly bitter warfare is hurting the Democrats, although there's still plenty of time for the party to heal its wounds. And it's hard to argue with the notion that Hillary has to damage Obama to have a chance at persuading enough superdelegates to rally to her side. But he hasn't been playing patty-cake either. Isn't that the essence of political campaigning?

First up from the HuffPost is Keith Boykin, a former Clinton administration official:

"I've had it with the Clintons.

"The past few months I've tried to defend Bill and Hillary Clinton against some of the more unreasonable attacks from their critics . . .

"In the past few weeks, I've been increasingly disturbed by the gratuitously negative tone of the Clinton campaign. . . . On Tuesday of this week, apparently dissatisfied that the Jeremiah Wright story had failed to derail Obama's campaign, Clinton broke her silence on the issue and told a newspaper in Pennsylvania (188 delegates) that Rev. Wright 'would not have been my pastor.'

"She repeated her criticism at a press conference later in the day. 'You know, we don't have a choice when it comes to our relatives. We have a choice when it comes to our pastors and the churches we attend,' she said.

"She ought to be ashamed. A month ago she stoked the fears that Obama might be a Muslim and now she plays on the fears of Pennsylvanians that the Illinois senator is a radical black Christian. I would expect that kind of nonsensical fear mongering from a Republican, but I'm disappointed when it comes from a fellow Democrat."

Ari Emanuel punches just as hard as his brother Rahm:

"The real experience Hillary Clinton gained during her years in the White House has finally been revealed: she learned, just like her husband, how to manipulate words to cover up her lies.

"Just as Bill used 'It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is' in front of the grand jury to mask his lies about Monica Lewinsky, Hillary is now using 'sleep deprivation' and 'misspoke' and 'it proves I'm human' to soft sell her hyperbolic tale of ducking sniper fire in Bosnia. . . .

"Do we really want to subject ourselves to this verbal abuse for the next four years?"

Cenk Uygur joins the Huff assault against Hill:

"It is abundantly clear that she can't catch him just based on the remaining elections. No, time buys her something else -- the chance for Obama to implode between now and whenever he formally wraps up the nomination.

"If it was only a matter of Obama's candidacy self-destructing, that would be one thing. She could sit back and see if anything changes through the next set of elections. You can argue that she's earned that. But it's another thing if she is actively trying to push Obama off the cliff with the extra time she's buying, even though she knows there is a great likelihood that he will be the Democratic nominee."

To further prove my thesis, check out the lead to this Reuters piece:

"Somebody forgot to tell Hillary Clinton the Democratic presidential race is over and Barack Obama won."

Says John Aravosis at Americablog: "Hillary has lost her inevitability, her come-back status, and now the entire media narrative. That first sentence of the Reuters story is devastating. The media finally gets it. The race is over. Hillary is simply causing as much damage as possible before the inevitable."

Inevitable. Where have I heard that word before, associated with Hillary?

And don't miss this: Slate's new Hillary Deathwatch feature, with her pictured aboard a sinking ship. What happened to subtle metaphors?

Time's Mark Halperin agrees that the media coverage is hurting Hillary:

"Fact #1: For more than a month, Hillary Clinton's only chance to win the nomination has been to find a way to disqualify Barack Obama as a stable, acceptable choice in the minds of superdelegates. ('Tonya Harding in the conservatory with a kitchen sink' is not a new reality.)

"Fact #2: The media has -- once again -- largely declared the race for the Democratic nomination over, giving Clinton next to no chance to prevail.

"Fact #3: In recent days, the Obama campaign has used e-mails and conference calls to engage in its most negative and personal assaults on Clinton since the campaign began.

"If Obama has the nomination wrapped up, why is his campaign going after Clinton so hard?"

Interesting question indeed.

As for the voters (remember them?): 22 percent of Dems say Hillary should drop out, but, then again, 22 percent say Obama should drop out, according to Rasmussen.

In the New Republic, historian David Greenberg says Clinton is being unfairly accused:

"The bickering has, troublingly, validated a piece of conventional wisdom among a liberal commentariat that was already tilting heavily toward Obama: that Clinton is 'ruthless,' 'vicious,' even 'Nixonian' -- an unscrupulous appendage of her husband's 'machine' (a word seldom used about the far better oiled Obama apparatus). As Obama's guru David Axelrod would have it, 'They are literally trying to do anything to win this nomination.' You hear it said everywhere, from blogs to high-toned op-ed pages. But this virulent meme is untrue, and -- quite apart from the current contest -- anyone who cares about liberalism and its future should be worried by its spread.

"To begin with, the charge that Clinton is Nixonian is as scurrilous as the smears that Obama is a closet Muslim or that John McCain sired a bastard child. Her campaign, simply put, is not categorically different from any other hard-driving presidential bid, including Obama's own. . . .

"Take a test: Did you think Clinton's '3 a.m.' ad doubting Obama's readiness to handle crises was fear-mongering, rather than a valid, if slightly lurid, gambit? Did you read her 'as far as I know' response to a question about Obama's religion as a shameful effort to stoke rumors rather than an unfortunate verbal tic amid a firm slap-down of those rumors? If so, you probably voted for Obama. . . .

"The demand for heads to roll whenever an aide misspeaks has reached a pitch that is dangerous, not for any singular ugliness but for its pettiness. And the press, to its discredit, lets these campaign-generated pseudo-events shape its coverage. But, as noted recently by James Carville -- no stranger to political combat -- campaigning is training for governing, preparing candidates to 'get hit, stand strong, and, if necessary, hit back.' "

Ah -- a Hillary supporter taking a stand! "I've had it with media trying to kick Hillary Clinton out of this race," says Jeff Jarvis at Buzz Machine. "It is not over. And Barack Obama has not won, not by a long shot.

"Obama, just like Clinton, will depend on the super delegates to get the nomination. Obama, just like Clinton, stands virtually no chance of getting to the convention the winner from elected delegates."

Big Tent Democrat blames both sides for hurting the cause:

"Too many in the Obama campaign, Obama supporters and Obama supporting blogs believe that their demonization of Hillary Clinton has had no ill effects on Barack Obama's image among the half of the Democratic Party that supports Hillary Clinton. They are wrong. At this point, without the active and sincere support by Hillary Clinton of his potential presidential run against John McCain, Obama has no chance in November. And vice versa of course."

One poll has Obama up by 15 in North Carolina.

The Goreacle to the rescue? "I'm rather embarrassed to admit that I'm slouching toward, well, a theory: if this race continues to slide downhill, the answer to the Democratic Party's dilemma may turn out to be Al Gore," says Time's Joe Klein. He envisions a Gore-Obama ticket if Barack falters. I find it impossible to imagine that the party would flout the wishes of the millions who voted for both candidates.

More Bloomberg speculation? I thought we were done with that:

"It was only hours after Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg finally made it clear that he was not running for president that his chief political guru, Kevin Sheekey, suggested that he would be the perfect running mate for Senator Barack Obama," says the New York Times.

"So Mr. Bloomberg's highly orchestrated introduction of Mr. Obama at a speech at the Cooper Union on Thursday quickly resuscitated speculation that the billionaire mayor might end up in the White House after all. But despite a few jokes and a stiff embrace, the men seemed nothing like two peas in the same political pod, destined to share a ticket."

Bloomberg says no one's going to ask him to be vice president. So we're back where we started: He says no and the press says yes.

Seems like McCain is a pretty well-known figure -- look at how many times he's been on "Meet the Press"! -- but still:

"John McCain became a public figure as a Vietnam prisoner of war. He has been in Congress for a quarter-century and ran a well-covered presidential race in 2000. He has co-authored five books," says USA Today.

"But his campaign still wants to make sure people know who he is.

"The Republican presidential nominee-in-waiting begins a 'biography tour' next week, visiting schools and military installations 'that have played a significant role in shaping who I am today,' as McCain put it in a fundraising letter."

The L.A. Times is apologizing for its botched story on the shooting of Tupac Shakur, which relied on fake documents, but could be facing lawsuits from the likes of Puffy Combs. I've got the latest.

At long last, a D.C. angle -- better than the Mayflower, at least -- on the Spitzer scandal:

"The former Senate aide who scandalously blogged about sleeping with Washington, DC's elite for cash -- and later posed nude for Playboy -- is among the inner circle of a Manhattan call-girl ring that counted Eliot Spitzer as a client, The New York Post has learned.

"Four years after her blog 'Washingtonienne' shocked the Capitol with salacious details of sex with married sugar daddies, Jessica Cutler has re-appeared as a 'model' on alleged madam Kristin 'Billie' Davis' Web site."

So what does Jessica have to say about this?

"Cutler admitted it was her face on the Web site but said 'they were Photoshopped.' . . .

"Asked yesterday if she worked as an escort, the temptress said: 'I can't talk about that.' But in two days of conversations with The Post, she owned up to partying with Davis and even to living for a time in her posh apartment at 235 E. 40th St."

Some day I want to write a story where I get to describe someone as a temptress!

But the spoilsports at the Daily News say Spitzer wasn't a client of this ring after all.

There isn't a reporter on the planet who hasn't used information from a press release, but usually you put it in -- what's the phrase? -- your own words. But Gawker calls out the New York Post's gossip page:

"Here's the lead to Page Six's item about Dr. Pepper's Guns N' Roses PR stunt: 'TIRED of a world in which Americans idolize wannabe singers, and where musicals about high school students pass as rock 'n' roll, Dr Pepper is begging Axl Rose to finally release this year his 17-years-in-the-making album, 'Chinese Democracy.' Such powerful language! Now here's the lead to the press release announcing the same event:

" Tired of a world in which Americans idolize wannabe singers and musicals about high schoolers pass as rock 'n roll music, Dr Pepper is encouraging (ok, begging) Axl Rose to finally release his 17-year-in-the-making belabored masterpiece, Chinese Democracy, in 2008.

"Awesome work."