Peter Brown of Qunnipiac University Polling Institute gives the first ever prestigious award for the “Bumbler of the Year” to…

Hillary Clinton!

“The convergence of the holiday season of goodwill and the end of the year produces a bias toward the sunny side. Hence, the emphasis on annual awards that celebrate the triumphs and accomplishments of the past year.

Time Magazine annually picks its person of the year, honoring the man or woman who had the most impact on the world during that year.

It generally goes to someone who had a positive effect on things, but not always since Adolph Hitler, who was certainly famous but not celebrated, once won it.

But how about those who were spectacular failures?

That’s why I have decided to offer a “bumbler of the year” award to the person in the public eye who most royally screwed up to their own detriment in the past 12 months.”

And why shes gets the award?

“In this period of “Obamamania,” it is easy to forget that a year ago, the president-elect was a long shot for the Democratic presidential nomination. Sen. Clinton was a huge favorite to win both the nomination and the November election.

NBC’s “Saturday Night Live,” whose humor generally works well because it reflects the popular view, referred to her in its skits as the “inevitable” next president.

How she lost the nomination and her shot at becoming the nation’s first female president will go down in political history as one of the great campaign screw-ups of all time.

To be fair, President-elect Obama’s campaign was extremely well-run and better funded than anyone could have possibly imagined. He smartly saw that the caucus states offered him a special opportunity for convention delegates that did not exist in the primaries where Sen. Clinton’s name recognition and support of the party establishment was a much bigger plus.

But if the Clinton campaign had done sufficient planning and staffing for the states that voted in the three weeks after the Feb. 5 “Super Duper Tuesday” primaries and caucuses, all of his work probably would have gone for naught.

The Clinton strategy had been to clinch the nomination on Feb. 5, when 22 states held Democratic primaries and caucuses. And that day, like most of the other Tuesdays during the winter and spring, they basically wrote off the caucus states.”

All too true. Obama didn’t win the nomination as Hillary lost it. Quite frankly I believe she never thought he had a chance. Hell, most of us didn’t think that. I honestly believed than Americans were more discerning and intelligent than to elect someone based on being cleanly black and articulate.

Perhaps the runner up should be the American people. That’s something they’ll learn soon enough.

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