Well, not exactly.  But the former First Lady has announced, per Ben Smith at Politico, by way of Talkleft, that she is against retroactivity of the small reduction in the crack (cocaine base, as people who prefer the word “waterboarding” like to call it) guidelines.

Now we all know that Hillary is a very smart woman, so she must have thought long and hard before making a decision that will affect the lives of 20,000 people directly, and perhaps another hundred thousand through one degree of separation.  And what would this deeply deliberated rationale be?

“In principle I have problems with retroactivity,” she said. “It’s something a lot of communities will be concerned about as well.”

An interesting principle.  A lot of communities will “be concerned,” and we wouldn’t want that.  So the principle is to let 20,000 people suffer rather than have to do the right thing and have communities (which is Hillary code for voters) “be concerned.”  It warms my heart to know that Hillary is guided by principles.  Well, maybe not the same principles that one might hope guide a Democratic candidate for President, or somebody running for the local school board for that matter, but principles nonetheless.  After all, it would just be horrible to think she was no more than a cynical manipulative politician will to sell out anything or anyone to win an election.

But what do real Democrats think of Hillary’s position?  This comment to Jeralyn’s post is revealing:

She doesn’t want the retroactive immunity to become a political football and distract from the heart of the issue, eliminating the discrepancy.  Well, you won’t like that, but it shows political seasoning, IMO.

So if I understand the point correctly, and it frankly has the smell of reality to it, real Democrats appreciate her saltiness by not letting the fact that 20,000 people will stay in prison for years distract her from the “heart of the issue,” eliminating the discrepancy.  But didn’t the guidelines change (which did not, by the way, “eliminate” the discrepancy, it just reduced it slightly), already go through and was effective as of November 1st?  So that deals done, and the only issue still on the table is retroactivity.  But we wouldn’t want to distract anyone by acting  like, oh, a Democrat.

I’ve spent a lot of time lately helping my daughter with her high school political science AP course this year.  One of her questions was to ask me to explain the difference between Republicans and Democrats.  I told her to ask her mother.

And Norm  agrees with me about Hillary, even though he used to think she was one swell First Lady.