Huh?

Former Secretary of State and 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, in an interview on Sunday, suggested that President Donald Trump is obsessed with her because he knows he is an illegitimate president and he has a guilty conscience about beating her.

The comments came when host Jane Pauley said that Ms. Clinton's name does not come up much in any campaign except the president's -- meaning that the members of her own party don't talk about her or her failed 2008 and 2016 campaigns. Now, the first blush thought about this lack of mention by everyone except her old opponent might be something like, well, Democrats don't want to remind anyone that they backed a campaign so awful its candidate could lose to Donald Trump. And the president, for his part, would very much like people to be reminded of exactly that as a way of suggesting that they are unlikely to do much better four years later. Every day he refreshes the electorate's memory of the unlikeable, short-sighted, secretive, smug, self-righteous 2016 nominee he increases the connection between that choice and whatever not-quite-so-clueless-but-pretty-damn-close choice Democratic primary voters make next year.

But even if the answers are more prosaic or more complex than that first-blush thought, Ms. Clinton's theory clearly indicates one of her key weaknesses as a nominee: She had a lot of dumb ideas. The president "knows" he is an illegitimate president? Right, because questioning the idea that he's the greatest thing since even before sliced bread came along fits Trump's personality to a T. He has a guilty conscience about defeating her? I understand why Ms. Clinton would like to believe that powerful and amoral men feel badly about doing things which cause her trauma or insult. But while that might have even been a little true in 1998 it's not even on the scope in 2019. She's met Donald Trump. She was at his 2005 wedding. What if anything that she knows about the man either personally or professionally suggests he has a guilty conscience? He slept with a porn actress while his wife was changing their new son's diapers, fer cryin' out loud!

Sure, she walks back the statement once she realizes what she's said with a lame remark about "insomuch as a he has a conscience," but she's already said that she thinks Donald Trump secretly feels badly about defeating her. Once again we see proven the old truism that despite his character Bill Clinton is a great retail politician, while Hillary Clinton is married to a great retail politician.