Someone’s bragging:
I love peanut butter. But more importantly for the statement you are about to read here, I know peanut butter. I know peanut butter the way Da Vinci knew fluid mechanics, the way Einstein knew physics, the way Grand Master Flash knows a turntable, the way Tom Brady knows how to perfectly balance throwing touchdowns and humping supermodels. I have eaten it. I have coddled it. I inhaled. What can I say? That’s how I spread.
Hat tip: Kottke.
And the government is behind.
The call goes forth …
Others are for Ron.
Bainbridge sees this rubric as a reason to be more optimistic about eventual withdrawal from Iraq. My fear that he’s wrong stems from a few factors. First, 160,000 troops is not small, in the sense of a minor military engagement. Over 100,000 troops for at least ten years is not a small war by any stretch of the imagination. Secondly, this is Iraq. It is sui generis. It has foiled and defeated everyone who has tried to govern it for more than a very short length of time. It is primarily Arab and Muslim. If you do not believe that the Arab Middle East is one of the least tractable, most mysterious, inherently ungovernable regions on the planet, then you could muster some optimism. But any purview of history will disabuse you. This is a big war, sapping and trapping us for the rest of our lives.
It’s in campaigning, not governing:
What Hillary Clinton alludes to but never comes out and says when she mentions her experience with Team Clinton is that she has experience not so much in governing, but in campaigning. That’s why she thinks she’s more prepared to take on the GOP candidate come November, and why she so often brings the argument back to dealing with the rigors of the campaign. (It’s also one of the striking internal contradictions in her ’emotional moment’, since that was in effect a reaction to what she’s been presenting as one of her strengths.) Of course, part of the Clinton method of governing is the permanent campaign, so for her it follows that she’s got more governing experience than Obama also.
There’s an awful lot of criticism on the Internets. P.M. Carpenter:
The "Hillary-hating" dismissal is also largely diversionary; a catchy alliteration designed to affiliate principled progressives with the mindless, Clinton-hating reactionaries of yesteryear.
Clinton and her aides have been peddling false information about Obama to undercut one of his primary arguments: she voted for the war; I was against it. Engaging in such disingenuous attacks may help Clinton beat back Obama, but it is hardly the way for her to counter Obama’s claim that she represents poltics-as-usual. It only proves his point.
Jill at Brilliant At Breakfast:
The Clinton attacks put Obama into an untenable position in which he has to respond, but not too angrily, lest he feed white people’s "Angry Black Man" fears.
Is this what it’s come to? Are the Clintons so hungry for a restoration that they’re willing to jeopardize the best chance for a Democratic sweep in a generation? And if so, doesn’t that make them just like the Bush family with whom they’re so chummy?
This strikes me as the real trap. The Clintons aren’t so dumb as to engage in blatant racism. But if they can create a fight between them and Obama over race in the media, the polarization helps them shore up their white ethnic base. They studied who put them over the top in new Hampshire – and they’re trying to replicate it nationally. They did the math. They probably didn’t want to go there if they didn’t have to. But after Iowa, they have to.
Edwards has 27 percent.
Waaay back. The racial fights breaking out in the Democratic primary have pitched Bill Clinton himself into the middle of the campaign. He’s now upping the ante again:
"I’ve got before me a list of 80 attacks on Hillary that are quite personal by Sen. Obama and his campaign going back six months that I’ve had pulled," he said, speaking to CNN contributor Roland Martin on WVON-AM’s "The Roland S. Martin Show" based in Chicago, Illinois.
In their desire to rescue a campaign that just had a near-death experience, the Clintons are at least showing us something. Americans would not be electing her in this election so much as re-electing them.
Yep, it’s working. Here’s the first sentence of the new Clinton fundraising email:
After my humbling victory in New Hampshire last Tuesday, I said that New Hampshire had helped me find my voice.
Humbling victory. Once again, one misses Mike Kelly.
When push comes to shove, the minorities tend to get shoved:
The Defense Of Marriage Act is an example of President Clinton’s refusal to risk political capital for a minority group that — he probably figured — had nowhere else to vote.
A similar example can be found regarding Senator Clinton’s view of federal sentencing. Hillary Clinton opposed retroactivity of the reduced crack sentencing guidelines, and she has criticized Obama for opposing federal mandatory minimums. In both cases, she has had to move farther to the right than most conservatives. No informed, intelligent person I know opposes either of those things, but it’s an apparent act of blatant, unprincipled self-protection. She is exploiting the vulnerable to avoid criticism.
See a discussion of those issues here and here. And as you’ll see, Obama’s taken the exact opposite position on both.
The Dish 