Huzzah, Hillary Clinton is our new secretary of state, as everybody knew she would be. Just two brave senators voted against their colleague, out of spite.
Basically from the moment she was nominated everybody knew that Clinton would get the appointment because, number one, we all knew she was pretty sore over the presidential race and then over not getting VP and really that is enough hurt feelings for anyone, and number two, there was no reason not to. Sure, her husband is always jetting off to weird places with supermarket barons to give million-dollar speeches to shady donors, but is that really her fault?
This is the thing about Hillary Clinton: she has a sterling resume, no known history of drug abuse or affairs or diaper-wearing with hookers, and is generally well suited to pretty much any public office -- just ask those 18 million voters who were so psyched about her in the primaries! -- and yet for some reason she's always getting tripped up by "ethics concerns," which end up being ethics concerns about Bill.
Jim DeMint and David Vitter ended up being the only two senators who thought Hillary Clinton's appointment was worth holding up for some more posturing about transparency and conflicts of interest related to the Clinton Foundation. For heaven's sake, even John Cornyn, the Texas senator who delayed her floor confirmation vote yesterday, gave up after John McCain asked him to.
So: DeMint and Vitter get crossed off the Clinton Christmas card list and will have to sit at the Dunces' Table in the Senate cafeteria. John McCain will always have Hillary Clinton's ear when it comes to deciding whom we should bomb next. But most importantly for America, Hillary will only need to go through Robert Byrd, Nancy Pelosi, Joe Biden, and Barack Obama to get the job she wanted in the first place.
Sara K. Smith writes for Wonkette, an online magazine about women in politics.