Hillary Clinton’s campaign is starting to remind me of the orders General Grant gave to General Sheridan for the 1864 Shenandoah Valley campaign.

Angry that a confederate army led by Jubal Early had been able to use the Valley both as a granary for the southern armies and a sheltered invasion route of the north, Grant created the 40,000 man Army of the Shenandoah and put the bulldog Sheridan in command with two specific orders; kill Early’s army and “consume and destroy all forage and subsistence, burn all barns and mills and drive off all stock in the region.” Valley residents who complained about the wholesale destruction were told, per Sheridan’s instructions, “that they have furnished too many meals to guerrillas to expect much sympathy.”

Grant explained in a letter to Army Commander in Chief Henry Halleck that he wanted Sheridan to “eat out Virginia clear and clean as far as they go, so that crows flying over it for the balance of the season will have to carry their provender with them.” Grant got down to more specific details in his further instructions to Sheridan, saying that he “should make all the Valley south of the Baltimore and Ohio railroad a desert as high up as possible. I do not mean that houses should be burned, but all provisions and stock should be removed, and the people notified to get out.”

The Clinton campaign has declared total war – on Obama, on the party, on the media, on basically anyone who is in their way. It is a campaign quite unlike any the Democrats have seen since perhaps 1860 when Stephen Douglas refused to step aside for the good of the party and ended up driving the Dixiecrats out of the convention to put up their own candidate thus assuring the election of a Republican.

No one will walk out of this year’s Democratic convention (we think). But Hillary Clinton’s tactics from here on out are apparently designed to cleave the Democratic party in two and bulldoze her way to the nomination by any means necessary.

And just in case she falls short, she is going to damage Obama to the point that he will be “unelectable” in November.

Jonathon Chait:

As I said, Obama was running well ahead of Clinton in head-to-head matchups a few weeks ago, and now they’re tied. After several more weeks of Clinton reinforcing McCain’s message against Obama, Clinton will probably be performing better than Obama against McCain. This is the point I made in my TRB column. She needs to convince the remaining uncommitted superdelegates to split for her by about a 2-to-1 margin. The only way she can get a split like that is if she can persuasively argue that Obama is unelectable. And the only way she can do that is to make him unelectable. Some people have treated this as an unfortunate byproduct of Clinton’s decision to continue her campaign. It’s actually a central element of the strategy. Penn is already saying he’s unelectable. It’s not true, but by the time the convention rolls around, it may well be.

MyDD on Obama’s unelectability:

With this in mind, the most sensible conclusion I seem to be able to infer from Penn’s statements are that after the Clinton campaign gets done with Obama he won’t be able to win a national election—in other words a promise from the Clinton campaign to make Obama unelectable.

Don’t get me wrong, there is definitely room for the two campaigns to hit one another on legitimate bones of contention or to make the case that their candidate is relatively stronger. And both candidates should be and need to be scrutinized so that the Democrats can put their best foot forward in November. But when a campaign begins lashing out senselessly, as appears to be the case in this instance, it simply must be put to a stop—for the good of the party and for the good of the nation, which cannot afford to go through the third Bush term with a McCain presidency.

Would it be too much to read into this theme the unspoken reason for Obama’s unelectability? Is the Clinton campaign playing their final and most devastating race card by strongly hinting that America simply will not elect a black man president?

I don’t think it can be anything else. It goes hand in hand with the rest of the campaign’s tearing down of Obama, marginalizing him as being too inexperienced and not tough enough while Hillary’s surrogates do the dirty work. Was Geraldine Ferraro’s statement about Obama basically being an “affirmative action” presidential candidate so off the cuff or was it a deliberate, planned ploy using a liberal icon like Ferraro to raise perhaps the most devastating questions about Obama’s abilities? Can even the Clintons be that devious?

Logic would say no but the idea shouldn’t be dismissed entirely. Desperate people do desperate things and in order to stave off elimination, the Clintons are proving themselves as proficient as the Huns in laying waste to the political landscape.

Is this damaging what Andrew Sullivan calls Obama’s “post racial” appeal? In Mississippi, Obama received 90% of the black vote while Clinton got 75% of the white vote. That’s the white Democratic vote (with about 12% GOP crossovers). It remains to be seen what will happen in Pennsylvania on April 22 but with Governor “A black man can’t win in Pennsylvania” Rendel, you can bet that the Clinton campaign will bend every effort to portray Obama as a one trick pony – a candidate unable to win the white working class vote while gaining 90% majorities from a racial group the Democrats have in the bag already.

Obama’s dilemma is if he plays Hillary’s game by even acknowledging the charges of unelectability, he falls into the trap of joining the debate. For Obama, there can be no discussion of the matter. It is a ridiculous charge on its face and so far, his campaign is treating it as such.

But what happens if in the next three states – Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Indiana – Obama fails to win a majority of white votes? In Virginia, Obama won 52% of the white vote. But in the southeastern part of the state in counties bordering North Carolina, Hillary Clinton rolled up huge majorities. And Indiana could also prove difficult for Obama given the economic downturn in that state which lately seems to have favored Clinton.

By exacerbating the racial divide in the Democratic party, Hillary Clinton may indeed make Obama unelectable. And there’s no guarantee that the strategy will sway the Super Delegates and make her the nominee especially since she will probably be trailing in the delegate count and popular vote. But none of this seems to matter. As far as the Clinton campaign can see, this is their only avenue to the White House and by hook or by crook, whether they bring the Democratic party down or not, they’re going to take it.