The Clintons have returned in force. Just like Caesar at Pharsalus, you think you have them pinned down and starved out, then you drop your guard for a moment and for the throat they go. In this case, they just got Hillary’s name entered as a possible Convention nominee.

The New York Daily News reported recently that Clinton had asked not to be nominated. But at a fundraiser last week in California, Clinton told supporters she was looking for a way to recognize them at the convention. “I happen to believe that we will come out stronger if people feel that their voices were heard and their views respected, she said. “I think that is a very big part of how we actually come out unified.”

That “way” will just happen to be a parade of division, a muttering chorus of doubt like a bad case of tinitis.

Colbert was right. This isn’t just “catharsis.” It’s a whole damn Greek drama.

Why the DNC allowed this to happen is beyond me - like we need more mania, arrogance, disunity, incompetence, nostalgia, avarice, back-biting and partisanship in this campaign. It certainly isn’t for the cause of banding behind Barack, as recent events have shown.

First we had Bill using an ABC exclusive interview opportunity to gripe about the primaries and deny that Obama’s ready to be President:

Then it came out that, behind closed doors, Hillary had encouraged her supporters in “PUMA” (Party Unity My Ass) to find some way to express the will to nominate her at the convention.

All this is occurring with the backdrop of The Atlantic having published the e-mails of the Clinton campaign; e-mails that reveal:

Above all, this irony emerges: Clinton ran on the basis of managerial competence—on her capacity, as she liked to put it, to “do the job from Day One.” In fact, she never behaved like a chief executive, and her own staff proved to be her Achilles’ heel.

Also clarified was the strategy of the Clinton campaign against Obama - that being to always be on the attack; to go for his person, not his policies; to cast him as “foreign” and not Americans. These are the very strategies of the GOP, and they are attacks that the Clintons have never refuted - have, in fact, only underhandedly stoked. It is no surprise that they are attacks that still have edge and venom to them.

What is a surprise is that all of this amounts to the DNC and the Obama campaign spotlighting the Clintons at the Convention. Given key speaking slots - even for Chelsea - and central billing on the schedule, they will be dominating the coverage with their controversy, their undermining unpredictability, their swaggering spitefulness.

Already they’ve managed to secure a rotten plank in the DNC platform, one emetically toxic to the cause of feminism, that as much as states that Hillary’s primary loss was due not to Obama’s excellence but to “demeaning portrayals of women [that] cheapen our debates, dampen the dreams of our daughters, and deny us the contributions of many.” How proponents of the Clinton position cannot see that their planned “protest’s” tawdry emotionalism, passive-aggression and self-indulgent divisiveness would be pathetic regardless of gender is beyond me. That they are not only allowed, but even endorsed, and transformed into an animus to accuse media bias and therefore dismiss the failings of the disgusting Clinton campaign as non-existent is a slash through the hamstrings for both women’s equality and political progress.

It is likely that the foundation of the Convention will be further cracked as the insurgent cries of PUMA get to voice their open-throated outrage that their cult idol, Clinton, did not triumph - or in the hopes that she still will.

Why the Democrats are not preventing this, and letting the isolated and bankrupt Clintons just starve away in a pit of their plummeting poll numbers, is beyond me. They are putting the knife to their outstretched throats for the sake of some nebulous loyalty to the wheezing machine of the past. They just don’t get it - the last thing this xenophobic feeding frenzy of a race needs is more blood in the water.

Why they don’t get it is one of the chief reasons it took a city-annihilating hurricane, an economic topple, two debilitating and senseless wars, massive civil rights violations and a smattering of sex scandals to bring them back to something resembling power in 2006: The America of today does not crave complexity, revolutionary anger, minority sensitivity, heated debate and diversity.

The America of the 21st century is scared, tired, hopeless.

They want simple answers, unflagging positivity, overweaning pride, absolute loyalty and unity.

Until the DNC gets this, they’re never going to really hold the throne.

And if the ravenous Clintons - who have already muscled their way into turning the Convention into televised party suicide - have their way, that throne will be set on one of the prettiest and most promising pile of broken dreams we have seen in over a generation.