What a remarkable strategy Hillary Clinton took in Tuesday's MSNBC presidential candidate debate, the last of a sum total of 20 if there is indeed any mercy in the world.

Against the magic candidate, she whined.  Incessantly.  Pettily.  Gratingly.  Pathetically.  She grabbed and owned whiny from her bizarre answer to the first question, which seemed to have something to do with her always getting the first question and wanting someone to get Senator Obama a pillow.

Her tone was whiny and her substance was whiny.  If she wasn't whining for herself, she was whining for the multitudes that don't have health care insurance, which she would force them to pay for even if that requires garnishing their wages or maybe putting them in health-care-denier prisons.  She was whining over Ohio voter perceptions of her husband's NAFTA, while trying to do the Texas primary two-step to avoid being whupped where NAFTA is popular.

Hey, we have reason to be whiny, too.  Columnist Maureen Dowd beat us to the piece we had begun, portraying Mrs. Clinton as the multiple-personality Sybil:  "We've had Experienced Hillary, Soft Hillary, Hard Hillary, Misty Hillary, Sarcastic Hillary, Joined-at-the-Hip-to-Bill Hillary, Her-Own-Person-Who-Just-Happens-to-Be-Married-to-a-Former-President Hillary, It's-My-Turn Hillary, Cuddly Hillary, Let's-Get-Down-in-the-Dirt-and-Fight-Like-Dogs Hillary." 

Perception, perspective, perfection, although Ms. Dowd only noted 10 personalities, as opposed to the real-life Sybil's l6, perhaps not really an oversight since Mrs. Clinton ain't gone yet.

Feminists-Who-Love-Hillary, the only constituency the poor woman seems still to command, will note that nowhere has anyone written of the Joan-of-Arc Hillary.  The Indira-Gandhi Hillary.  The Golda-Meir Hillary.  The Magaret-Thatcher Hillary.

Since even political obituary writers must start early, most are concentrating on the long and growing list of campaign failures and miscalculations, many of which demonstrate that even experts can behave like amateurs.  Despite the former Bill Clinton's attempts at myth-busting Obama's messages, the Clintons believed too many of their own.  As textbooks of don'ts, the analyses will not necessarily be incorrect.

Most will, however, hasten past a basic principle, pointed out here and elsewhere for a long time.  Given any reasonable alternative, people don't vote for candidates they don't like.  Hillary Clinton, the commander-in-chief of her own mind, began with the highest negatives of any serious contender for high office in living memory. 

The more people saw her, the more people disliked her.  If only she could have managed a Rose Garden campaign, sitting on her early gigantic lead among her own party's voters before they really got to know her, she might have pulled it off.

To those of her own ideological persuasion, Hillary Clinton exploited "the vast right wing conspiracy" against her (and her husband) rather successfully, for a long time.  Now, she is actually being trounced by her very own "vast left wing conspiracy," although we are not likely to hear her say that.

In the end, however, it's still mostly about her and her personalities, and a critical mass of dislike is not a conspiracy, but an electorate making a choice.