Clinton always knew that Obama was bound to fail. He understood the megastar illusion of Obama was a haze of press release news stories, wishful thinking and manufactured hysteria that would be no match for the actual challenges of the country. And he also knew that the knee jerk radicalism and arrogance of his opponent and his trusted advisers would leave him hopelessly out of touch with the country in troubled times.

The former President knows the audience that Obama is playing for, the Beltway radicals with degrees and theories, the San Francisco green-energy tycoons, the New York reporters totting along Kindles with a hundred trendy bestsellers they never read through the same dozen airports and the midwestern liberal sages, playing politically correct cracker-barrel philosophers in the hopes of holding on to the party's vanishing white male voters. And he also knows that audience isn't enough to hold the country. It was enough to take the country with a blizzard of money and publicity, but conquests are easy, defenses are hard.