Hillary Clinton is on the verge of losing the Democratic nomination.  According to reports, her campaign is divided on how to turn the tide of battle over the next couple of weeks -- how to deal with Barack Obama.  The Obama campaign has the momentum now, and a loss in either Ohio or Texas, or in Pennsylvania later, could end her campaign.

We hear a lot of explanations about how Clinton's campaign went off the track.  We hear that she relied too much on big states and primaries, that she's not likable enough to compete with the charismatic Barack Obama, that her campaign is undisciplined and poorly managed.  We hear that she never distinguished herself on the issues, that it was a mistake to run as a Washington insider, and that her experience versus change theme backfired when she failed to convince voters that there was any real difference between her experience and Senator Obama's.  As a matter of fact, there is so little evidence of executive experience on either candidate's part that the pundits have taken to arguing that the way they are running their campaigns is an indicator of how well they are likely to govern.  Well, it isn't.  The Bush administration has shown time and again that the methods that get you elected are useless -- indeed they are dangerous -- when it comes time to govern.

Senator Clinton has one shot at turning her campaign around and winning the Democratic nomination.  The only way she will win is if the voters in the upcoming primaries and the super delegates who will vote at the convention decide that there is a real difference between getting elected and governing the United States.

For Senator Clinton to win, Democrats will have to decide that the government of the United States is so badly broken that it can't be fixed by all the good intentions in the world.  We have to believe that to fix our government we need to see exactly how it is broken and how to make it work again.

We have just been through eight of the most demoralizing years since the Reagan administration.  The Bush administration has revived Ronald Reagan's conscious use of threats -- in Reagan's case the Soviet threat and in Bush's case the threat of Islamic terrorism -- to promote an insupportable military budget that is designed to break the backs of minorities, the poor and the working class while -- in a uniquely the perverse way -- they have consciously pursued a policy of destroying the Executive Branch by politicizing every federal agency and using the power of the Executive to further their agenda.

There is not one federal agency that has been managed with anything even approaching competence.  The FDA, the USDA, the IRS, the VA, FEMA, the FCC and the Departments of Defense,  Justice and State have been mismanaged and are badly broken.  Tens of thousands of people have died from drugs that should not have been approved, tainted beef has found its way into school lunches, soldiers wounded in battle have been mistreated -- the list goes on and on and it is specific and it is horrendous.  And our candidates are not talking about it in anything except cliches and generalities.

Before Washington can be fixed, we have to see how it is broken.  The chance Senator Clinton has to be nominated now is to show voters exactly how Washington is broken.  If her experience argument is to become persausive, it must be based on the fact that she sees things Senator Obama doesn't see.