Hillary Clinton Channels April Ludgate

I know I am not the only person to have found Hillary Clinton’s delivery of her Campaign Reset speech to have been weird. On social media I have seen her oddball cadences and peculiar emphesis labeled “wooden” or “stilted” and even robotic.

But she wasn’t robotic. I kept listening to her speak, and thinking, “what is this reminding me of?” And it eluded me, until — distracted by real life — I finally gave up thinking about it, but only until I saw this video out of the Rubio campaign, which highlighted precisely the part of Hillary’s speech that had nagged at me:

Weird, weird delivery. I knew I’d heard it somewhere before — a speech delivered in a manner so hucksterish, so contemptuous of the intelligence of the listener.

On twitter, I tried to puzzle it out:

Was she reminding me of W.C. Fields? No, that still wasn’t it, but I knew that old bamboozling con-artist was nearer to the mark.

Even so, Hillary’s delivery went beyond the theatrics of a phony carny barker. There seemed to be an unfamiliarity with the ideas, even as they were being presented; words spoken into the ether, unsupported by even the slightest breeze of sincerity, which might keep them aloft, which is why, splat, they fell so hard.

And then, suddenly, I got it: so much insincerity, rendered this weirdly, and offered for no other reason than the monetary prize offered to the winner?

Here it is.

It’s worth noting that, weirdly delivered “big speech” aside? She’s still not talking.