I never liked Hillary Clinton. Millions feel the same way. Ask any hinterland bubba. But I was ready to hold my nose and vote for her anyway. But now she’s reportedly ready to flip the bird to the Sanders/Warren movement by picking Tim Kaine as her vice-presidential running mate. Now I hate her.

An HE commenter wrote last night that Hillary has to play her cards cautiously with Kaine or she might conceivably lose to Trump. I posted the following in the comment thread three or four hours ago; here it is front and center:

You don’t get it. Many voters are riled, scared. They don’t want “straight down the middle”, which to them feels the same as “hold the course” and “same system & same social/political order that has been scaring them.” They want the apple cart overturned (Trump vs. multiculturals, Bernie vs. oligarchy), things re-ordered, the 1% challenged, the deck reshuffled.

With the Kaine pick Hillary has assured these scared voters that this can’t / won’t happen under her administration. She’s underlined that she will govern with a cautiously liberal, more-of-the-same approach — a measured, practical-minded, incremental application of moderate liberalism. She may win with Kaine — I certainly don’t want Trump — but I’m sickened by the lack of fire that the Kaine pick signifies — the guardedness, the caution, the lack of arousal.

Hillary has essentially embraced a rejection of the spirit of the ’16 primary season. She’s come out of her shell and shown her colors, all right. By essentially telling the Sanders / Warren wing to shut up, shove it and get in line because they have no other choice, in my mind she’s the betrayer. I despise her now. She’s the new Walter Mondale.

From “Girl Squad,” a 6.11 Maureen Dowd/N.Y. Times column about the meeting between Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren.

“’I know I was the last Democratic woman in the Senate to endorse you but Bernie and I have more in common,” Warren says. ‘We don’t buckrake on Wall Street. People are enthusiastic about us and believe what we say. We’re pure.”

“’Pure scolds,’ Hillary sniffs. ‘I guess it hit you, when you saw me fighting for my life against a dyspeptic 74-year-old socialist with one suit, that if you had jumped in, you could have been the first woman president.’

“’Yes,’ Warren muses. ‘I only loaned Bernie my progressive hordes. I’m the real leader of that movement.'”