Bill Belichick = Hillary Clinton

I don't quite understand why everyone is so surprised that Hillary Clinton's staff were pre-staging friendly questioners in the audience at "town hall meetings." Has anybody ever watched footage of these events and thought, "Hmm, what a frank exchange of ideas that provides raw, unfiltered insight into the candidate and their vision for America!"

(Has anybody ever watched footage of these events, period? That's the better question. When they're not spiced with a YouTube moment or a particularly nasty comment about an opponent, they're a visual substitute for Ambien.)

My problem with the whole Hillary operation is that she's actually painting herself as an underdog. The woman is the 800-pound gorilla on both sides of the aisle, and she and Giuliani have been itching for a rematch ever since he dropped out of the 2000 Senate race after his cancer diagnosis. (Okay, maybe Rudy has. Hillary, I doubt.) She's got a double-digit lead over Obama and Edwards and commands the vast majority of the political resources that got her husband elected, plus more that she's marshaled on her own. The unofficial Hillary website hillaryis44.com raises an outcry about an "anti-Hillary mob."

The whole point is that Hillary is playing the underdog, and doing it as part of a calculated strategy. This woman is the Bill Belichick of the Democratic field; she's in it to win no matter what and, if challenged, will retaliate with overwhelming and borderline inappropriate force. When anyone criticizes her, her campaign lashes out brutally. It's the political equivalent of running up the score against the Redskins.

(Also, I should point out that I'm a huge Pats fan, but I'm not such a huge Hillary fan.)

Anyway, my point is that we shouldn't be surprised that Hillary would pull something like this. In the pantheon of dirty political tricks, it's not really that dirty. Kind of like using a video camera to steal signals during a Jets game. Everybody does it, it doesn't garner that much of an advantage, and in the end, the only thing remarkable about Hillary planting questions in the audience is that she got caught.

Finally, I will end this blog with a link to a truly amazing campaign sticker. You can buy t-shirts and stickers with that emblazoned on it at townienews.com, which also features the funniest New England sports fan to get overpaid by ESPN since Bill Simmons.