For the last week it’s seemed that Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Barack Obama (D-Ill.) were adhering to their tacit truce, continuing the primary campaign but avoiding the harsh exchanges that make later party unity a dimmer and dimmer prospect. Clinton, particularly, had de-escalated her rhetoric.

Then we have a speech like Sen. Clinton’s Wednesday in Florida, in which she compared the controversy over seating the Florida and Michigan delegates to the Florida recount debacle and many of the great voting and civil rights battles of the 20th century — each of which amounts to something like a primal cause for Democrats. She is, of course, also claiming that whatever the delegate count, she leads in the popular vote and that that is what really counts.

Never mind that even if you count Michigan and Florida, she’s still not ahead in the popular vote (that is, without resorting to tendentious methods of counting).

I’ve always assumed, as I think most people have, that once the nomination is settled, the Florida and Michigan delegates will be seated. And I can see that Sen. Clinton wants to embrace this issue to claim a moral victory even while coming short of her goal of the nomination. As things currently stand, seating them would still leave Sen. Clinton behind in delegates.

But Sen. Clinton is doing much more than this. She is embarking on a gambit that is uncertain in its result and simply breathtaking in its cynicism.

I know many people believe there is a deep moral and political issue at stake in the need to seat these delegations. I don’t see it the same way. But I’m not here to say they’re wrong and I’m right. It’s a subjective question and the Democratic National Committee’s (DNC) decision last year was very messy and arguably wrong. What I’m quite confident about, though, is that Sen. Clinton and her top advisers don’t see it that way.

Why do I think that? For a number of reasons. One of her most senior advisers, Harold Ickes, was on the DNC committee that voted to sanction Florida and Michigan by not including their delegates. Her campaign completely signed off on sanctions after that. And there are actually numerous quotes from the senator herself saying those primaries didn’t and wouldn’t count.

Michigan and Florida were slapped with the sanctions because they ignored the rules the DNC had set down for running this year’s nomination process.

The evidence is simply overwhelming that Sen. Clinton didn’t think this was a problem at all — until it became a vehicle to provide a rationale for her continued campaign.

Now, that’s politics. One day you’re on one side of an issue, the next you’re on the other, all depending on the tactical necessities of the moment. But that’s not what Clinton is doing.

She’s elevating it to a level of principle — first principles — on a par with the great voting rights struggles of history. There’s no longer any question that she’s going to win the nomination. The whole point of the popular vote gambit was to make an argument to superdelegates. And that’s fine, since that’s what superdelegates are there for — to make the decision by whatever measure they choose. But they’ve made their decision. The superdelegates are breaking overwhelmingly for Obama. They simply don’t buy the arguments she’s making.

What Clinton is doing is not securing her the nomination. Rather, she’s gunning up a lot of her supporters to believe that the nomination was stolen from her — a belief many won’t soon abandon. And that on the basis of rationales and arguments there’s every reason to think she doesn’t even believe in.

Marshall is editor of talkingpointsmemo.com .  His column appears in The Hill each week.  E-mail: This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it