Entries associated with the tag "Hillary Clinton":

There's been quite a bit of discussion about how many former Clinton appointees will be in the Obama White House. To an extent it's inevitable--Bill was president for eight years, so obviously many qualified Democrats will have gotten their qualifications during the previous Democratic administration. But I still think it's a terrible mistake, because of all the hardcore crazy America will have to suffer through from the New York Times. Obama could have nominated Plaxico Burress as Secretary of State and the reaction would be less weird:

Not all the staging was designed to address Mrs. Clinton’s sensibilities. She and the five other appointees walked out on stage and stood in line, almost as if at attention, waiting for the president-elect to walk in. He did so briskly, with Mr. Biden at his heels.

Could you at least chill until she does something MORE PROFOUND THAN STAND IN LINE?

And there was a fleeting flashback to her primary season gamesmanship when she listed representing New York as a foreign policy credential. “You’ve also helped prepare me well for this new role,” she told her Senate constituents. “After all, New Yorkers aren’t afraid to speak their minds and do so in every language.”

It's never going to end. Never, ever, ever.

I'm curious to see if Obama's just-announced AG pick, Eric Holder, becomes controversial outside the blogosphere. He's said a lot of very encouraging things about various government policies, but he has two enormous skeletons in his closet.

1. The Marc Rich pardon. You may recall Bill Clinton's inexplicable and inexcusable pardoning of the financier and international tax evader of mystery as one of the low points of his administration. Holder basically claims he punted on the Rich pardon, in and of itself not especially encouraging, but there's evidence that Holder helped Rich circumvent the normal pardon process, as was SOP at the time (more here).

2. Chiquita. Holder, as lawyer for the company, was knee-deep in one of the ugliest and most complicated stories of international business intrigue this decade. Basically, for years, the banana company had been paying protection money to Colombian paramilitary death squads, beginning with the left-wing FARC and ELN. In the 1990s, the right-wing paramilitary AUC, which emerged from the unimaginably shady world of Colombian narco-militias, became a force to be reckoned with and became the recipient of $1.7 million of Chiquita's largesse between 1997 and 2004. An outstanding Portfolio article from last year tells the full tale.

Anyway, this was troublesome but not illegal until 2001, when the AUN was declared a terrorist organization, and the situation had gone from looking bad to worse--Chiquita went from paying off leftist militias to paying pro-business right-wing militias to illegally paying pro-business terrorist militias (i.e. at least when they were paying leftist militias it didn't look like a conflict of interest). 

Chiquita responded in a couple ways:

a) Claimed they didn't know for a couple years that the AUC had officially been declared a terrorist organization.

b) Said they didn't really have any choice.

The latter is where Holder comes in. Holder, making the case that Chiquita was in a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't vise--pay the AUN and fund their killing, don't pay them and see their employees get killed--negotiated a $25 million fine for Chiquita that kept their corporate bigwigs (including current Sun-Times CEO Cyrus Freidheim) out of jail. The Washington Post, the LA Times, the Christian Science Monitor, and the Huffington Post all have good, extensive breakdowns of the legal issues and logrolling that led to the settlement.

Salon legal blogger Glenn Greenwald argues that Holder was just doing his job as Chiquita's legal counsel, a job that somebody had to do: "Holder is no more tainted by his defense of Chiquita than lawyers who defend accused terrorists at Guantanamo are tainted by that."

I don't have a right answer--it's a hot debate in the progressive blogosphere. But I'm not alone in being unsure and having the vague fantods.

Anyway, while Hillary is the big news today--she's RedEye's cover pol!--I think it's Holder, of all the appointees the president-elect announced today, who will emerge as the big story come confirmation time.

The NYT is reporting that Hillary Clinton will be the new Secretary of State. Other likely appointments: former Clinton deputy AG Eric Holder as Attorney General, former Clinton econ adviser Peter Orszag as budget director.

My pick for most awesome Obama appointment: FCC transition team co-chair Kevin Werbach, a hardcore World of Warcraft vet (h/t Miles).

That damn mic is picking up the Pepsi Center A/C or something. The tacky DNC logo is still up. Can I help you guys out or something?

Hey, Mark Warner mentioned Danville! That's where I get food on the drive to and from Raleigh! It's like the state capital of 17-year-olds cruising the strip in jacked-up pickups! Yay regionalism!

Warner was a good governor (as opposed to Tim Kaine, a veep Dems were fortunate to dodge), but his speech was disjointed--a bunch of little bits of a theme that you could shuffle around at random. There was one killer bit:

"Think about it: after September 11th, if there was a call from the president to get us off foreign oil to stop funding the very terrorists who had just attacked us, every American would have said, 'how can I do my part?' This administration failed to believe in what we can achieve as a nation, when all of us work together."

Other than that, it was kind of forgettable--plenty of sound bites, though. Do people write for the AP wrapup now?

On the MSNBC panel charismatic lesbian-next-door Rhodes scholar Rachel Maddow is sitting next to the aged Catholic Nixon street fighter Pat Buchanan, and they're playing off each other. They're really good together, seriously. That makes me feel better about America than Warner's speech, honestly.

Other people are watching Fox for you.

Hey, Dee Dee Myers, the Democratic Dana Perino. Presidential spokespeople are boring--that's their job. Please don't interview them.

Oh, shit, Keith Olbermann just brutalized McCain. Going out to commercial, he said something like this--"Hillary Clinton set to speak... introduced by her daughter Chelsea, once the target of a horrible joke by John McCain." That may have been the most effective attack of the night. You see how being a partisan Democrat can be frustrating? Speaking of mean attack jokes, the comments at The Poor Man Institute ("Resident Evil Syndrome") are cracking me up.

Hillary's about to speak. I would like to second Eric Bohlert's plea to historically chill about it.

Ok, maybe not. Bill Richardson is one of the few politicians with the guts to sport facial hair. Respect.

Oh, no, we've got movie sign! Is Hillary running for president again? Why are we in reruns?

"If we can blast 50 women into space, we can put a woman in the White House." Does anyone need a speechwriter? I can't deal with post-literacy speechwriting, and I work cheap.

Quoth my fellow convention-watcher: "How does Bill Clinton make that face? That tears-just-about-to-well-up face?"

Has Hillary ever worn the same pantsuit twice? I'm curious. She's an underrated speaker, by the way, but "no way, no how, no McCain" is a dud.

The tributes to Bill Gwatney and Stephanie Tubbs Jones were pretty classy. That kind of got me.

If John McCain will amend McCain-Feingold to ban the use of the "from... to..." construction in televised campaign appearances, I'll vote for him.

Indeed. And.

When Hillary talked about how awesome America was under President Clinton I think Bill had a little petit mort. When I say that he looks like a pig in shit I mean that as a compliment. I like seeing people happy.

The Harriet Tubman part was inspired, and then, segue! "But remember, before we can keep going, we have to get going by electing Barack Obama president." Hillary can't stay away from the cheese, even when she's on a roll. I think it's why she lost. Is it her speechwriters? Residual pantsuit aesthetics?

Hey, time for the Daily Show! Sleep well!

First, two things, just so you know where I'm coming from.

A) I don't mean to brag, but I do think I have an above-average grasp of the English language, particularly in regards to journalism, media generally, and politics, and am attuned to nuance.

B) I do support Obama over Clinton, personally. And I think the latter has said some things in defense of her continued candidacy that are, at best, an insult to our intelligence. It doesn't really bother me that she seems to want to go all the way to the convention, but I wish she'd stop making dumb arguments in her own defense. Hell, I don't even mind wrong arguments, I just hate the dumb ones. And the dumb and morally offensive ones I would hope would have already convinced everyone to pack up the tents.

Having said that, the total and complete freakout over her RFK reference is a total mystery to me. Five out of the eight diaries at DailyKos right now are about it; Keith Olbermann has a Special Comment; this post rounds up comments from the leading lights in the liberal blogosphere about this being the final straw; the MSM is latching on with headlines like Hillary Clinton Raises the Specter of the Unspeakable; etc. I realize that the Clinton campaign has recently turned into a bullshit factory and after the Zimbabwe comparison I lost all sympathy, but I think the coalescing conventional wisdom on this latest statement is wrong.

Here's what she said: "My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California."

She was talking about how primary campaigns used to be longer. People remember significant things more than insignificant ones, and presumably the two most handy examples floating around in her head were her husband in '92 (significant for obvious reasons) and Kennedy in '68 (ditto).

Now, it so happens that--again--her reasoning is flawed (also). I'm not sure what else is wrong with it, though. But I'd be glad to hear arguments:

"The tongue slips, of course, but is she really arguing that she shouldn't drop out because Obama might get shot?"

No.

"New HRC campaign rationale -- Obama might get shot and killed before formally securing the nomination, so she may as well stay in the race!"

Ibid.

"You only have to spend a few minutes talking with African-Americans about this campaign to discover that the fear that Obama could be assassinated is very much on their minds. It is in everyone's subconscious, especially Michelle Obama's. To refer to the June assassination of Bobby Kennedy in the context of reasons to stay in this interminable race against Barack Obama is therefore catastrophically inappropriate."

Wait, but Bobby Kennedy was white. What if Hillary was coming down to the wire with John Edwards and she'd said that? Edwards kind of looks like Bobby Kennedy--so would it be worse?

"The fear of a president or a presidential candidate being shot or assassinated is horrifying precisely because recent history teaches us that it can happen [just read that whole sentence; no one cares about prose anymore; please turn out the lights when you leave--Mgmt]. We don't need anybody to remind us, and we certainly don't need anybody to remind whatever suggestible wackos might be lurking in the shadows."

So we should definitely write lots and lots about one comment to the Argus Bugle-Whatever editorial board so we can keep talking how no one should talk about it.  But aren't you... isn't... your powers are too strong for me....

I've said it before and I'll say it again--language is going the way of keywords and tag clouds. What used to look like

"Robert Kennedy was still campaigning in California in 1968 when he was assassinated"

now becomes something like

"Robert Kennedy Assassination 1968 California was still when he campaigning."

That's not a world I want to live in, even though I'm a Web editor and would have a clear evolutionary advantage.

PS: Have a nice Memorial Day weekend. Like I said last year, read this. Also, Robert Lowell. (h/t ptb)

Damn.

"How many debate moderators actually get booed on live television? That's how bad it was."

"perhaps the most embarrassing performance by the media in a major presidential debate this year"

"My God. It gets worse and worse. Just move the whole thing to Fox."

"I am outraged, practically shaking, that the debate is almost half over and no issues have been discussed."

"like a battle of Manos the Hands of Fate v.s. Red Zone Cuba"

"Now they're asking about Iraq -- seems like the kind of third-tier issue I'd wait an hour to ask about!"

"We are now 45 minutes into the debate and there has not been a single question on the issues."

"throwing my Subway sandwich at the TV"

"policy questions don't lead to fireworks—but at least you don't get duds like tonight"

"One gets the distinct impression that the debate is geared towards the chattering class, not the nation at large."

So: who liked it? Jonah Goldberg, Mark Hemingway, and John Podhoretz.

You didn't miss much if you didn't watch it. Go read Salon's interesting and fair-minded piece on the three candidates' (McCain? Remember him?) plans to end the war and hug yourself if you were doing something else this evening.

Noted: Kos writes: "I honestly don't understand why Democrats haven't learned to ignore the bullshit substance-less questions and simply say, 'Okay, that's a dumb question. Let's talk about something people care about, like the housing crisis.'" This is mostly but not entirely fair--Obama made a halfhearted pushback at one point. Still: why not? Because if they don't like you, they'll fuck you up; ask Mitt Romney or Al Gore.

Who's they? Who ain't? (cf.)

Update: Welcome Slate readers! If any of you are important D.C. political journalists, please tell someone that if someone really wants to pwn Obama for real, ask dude to explain his firm alliance with the Chicago democratic machine (not Rezko, which has been done to death, but Daley, the odious Dorothy Tillman, etc). Because we can't figure it out. My colleague Ben Joravsky explains better than I can.

"You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

For what it's worth, I disagree with Obama; in my experience, a good job with a respectable salary is no impediment to intolerance and gun-worship; I think what he's out of touch with is the suburbs. Not to mention that clinging to anti-trade sentiment seems to be at least an understandable response to 25 years of job loss in the industrial heartland.

Hillary responded with all the dignity one would want from someone seeking the highest office in the land, doing Crown Royal (!) and chasers at a photo op and thus underscoring what bitter people of all incomes and political affinities actually cling to. Whatever--if she really wanted to be down with the volk, she'd pawn Mark Penn's Blackberry and go on a meth bender. The Tribune reports that the bitter recriminations have led to an impassioned exchange about who has the most honest photo-op, basically the definition of a fool's errand. The silliness: it's getting out of control.

Personally, I'd think that no matter your feelings on the subject, the revelation that torture in Iraq was ok'd at the very highest levels of our government is way more interesting.

Update:

Not sure how to disapprove of your pastor or adviser? Don't know the difference between reject and denounce? Here's a handy guide for the 2008 campaign season.

The Macedonian government opened its border to refugees the day before Clinton arrived to meet with government leaders. And her mission to Bosnia was a one-day visit in which she was accompanied by performers Sheryl Crow and Sinbad, as well as her daughter, Chelsea, according to the commanding general who hosted her.

The Trib takes a no-holds-barred look at Hillary Clinton's claims of foreign-policy genius (deploying weapons of mass entertainment against Bosnia, it turns out, didn't make that much of a difference). It's one of the best examples of critical journalism I've read this election cycle, and it's getting lots of deserved attention from the blogosphere.

Update! Sinbad responds! "I think the only 'red-phone' moment was: 'Do we eat here or at the next place.'" Actually, that's where the Trib article falls short; no one asked Sinbad about his role in Clinton's history-making journey to a different world.

Samantha Power resigned from the Obama campaign. It's a pretty big deal, since she was one of his most important advisers, and from what I can glean, a knowledgeable and humane influence on his foreign policy. All in all a pretty staggering mistake, especially given that among her many qualifications she's a journalist and should probably know better.

Salon has a good interview with her about her new book on Sergio Vieira de Mello and her role in the campaign. This could make her appearance at the Harold Washington Library next week pretty interesting.

Samantha Power, the Obama advisor ("Obama's Condi Rice") who lured Cass Sunstein to Harvard, is in hot water for calling Hillary Clinton--get this--a monster. Plus: "You just look at her and think: ergh." Cass's ex Martha Nussbaum could teach her a thing or two about disgust.

In other loose-lipped-academic-Obama-advisor news, Austan Goolsbee is off the hook: it seems that the Clinton campaign was the one that called up Canada and said NAFTA is cool no matter what she says.

I am both a fan and a practitioner of what my friend Sam likes to call "speculative celebrity fiction" (recent example: Esquire's fictional recreation of Heath Ledger's final days), but as bleeding-edge as I consider myself to be there's no way I ever could have come up with an editorial about what a television character from 20 years ago would think of Ron Paul, John McCain, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama. Particularly not one this detailed and earnest.

Alex was a true conservative Republican. He was for limited government. He was strongly against government involvement in the personal lives of its citizens. He was competent and capable. The ultimate overachiever. But above all, Alex was a firm believer in the power of ideas. The true conservative belief in the competitive marketplace of intellectual discourse. Where the best ideas win -- usually Alex's. And, so it's difficult to recognize in this current incarnation of the Republican Party, a party whose legacy will include Terri Schiavo and Hurricane Katrina, a place where Alex might feel the least bit comfortable.

That is some avant-garde op/ed writing. It's not as effective as it would be were it written as Alex Keaton, but maybe the world's not ready for that yet.

* Carol Marin attributes some of Hillary's comeback to Tina Fey (vid). I'll believe it for real when the campaign rocks Meredith Brooks.

* Obama is counting on the reality of the math, and might actually come away with more delegates than Hillary from Tuesday; Hillary's end-game strategy is an issue, except for on Tuesday night when a win was a win. I claim the BCS as the operative sports metaphor for this numbers racket.

* Ohio is Old America ("the four-door Buick of the country, not particularly exciting but clinging to the hope that it is durable and safe"), Texas is New America.

* The New America can't count or run an election, which makes sense. Again: magic packets.

* Are you a Hillary supporter who's tired of not being able to spend money on cutting-edge political tchotchkes? Get the Marc Jacobs Hillary shirt.

* Matt Yglesias: it's weird that Lisagor award-winner Austan Goolsbee is such a big deal because all the NAFTA talk is just snowing the rubes anyway.

* Tim Jones has a good piece on poverty and voting in Ohio. 

* Marin talks Rezko on NBC5. Nothing new but the slo-mo perp walk is a nice touch.

* John McCain used the phrase "my friends" 11 times in his victory speech. Get used to it, it's going to be a long seven months.

* BusinessWeek assures America that it's actually OK if a Democrat wins. What good is money if you can't inspire terror in your fellow man? Always fun finding out what the other .1% thinks.

* How to Inspire People Like Obama Does (caution: may not work in Ohio). "2. Alliteration. Both Kennedy and King were fond of this device that strings together words that start with similar sounds."

* One of the more thoughtful and comprehensive arguments in favor of Obama comes from Christopher Hayes, a longtime In These Times writer who recently became the political correspondent for The Nation. Hayes, I think, speaks for a lot of midwestern progressives, the kind of people who lionize Paul Wellstone and Russ Feingold and found themselves a bit disappointed with Obama's local, state, and national record. He's strongly in favor of Obama anyway, and his reasons, in a post-Bush era, are sensible:

"[Hillary's] hawkishness relative to Obama's is mirrored in her circle of advisers. As my colleague Ari Berman has reported in these pages, it's a circle dominated by people who believed and believe that waging pre-emptive war on Iraq was the right thing to do. Obama's circle is made up overwhelmingly of people who thought the Iraq War was a mistake."

The effect of advisers and cabinet members was exaggerated under Bush, an ineffectual manager who was particularly vulnerable to the crazy people around him. Nonetheless, the past few years have emphasized an important lesson--when you elect a president, you're electing a whole political team. It's worth keeping in mind.

* Along those lines, Emily Bazelon's argument that electing a law prof would be a good idea is pretty convincing. It also raises a broader point: Obama may be "inexperienced" as a politician, but he's experienced in other areas, such as community organizing and teaching law. Bush came in with a lot of experience in business, and that profoundly affected his administration. Rather than writing off Obama's pre-political days as inexperience, it's worth thinking about that time as experience.

* Lynn Sweet has a handy roundup of Obama's controversial local ties, such as Rezko, Bill Ayers, Austan Goolsbee, etc. I have to say I'm just not that bothered. The media's spent months digging into his ties to Rezko, understandably, but so far they haven't turned up anything terribly compelling. Talking Points Memo has a good summary of the Rezko issue; Michael Miner has more on Obama and Bill Ayers.

* On the other hand, no one's pushed him on his support of the local Democratic machine except one crazy-ass radio host. Tim Russert blew 7+ minutes pestering Obama on Farrakhan but never once asked "Dorothy Tillman? WTF?"

* Chicagoist writes: "It's quite possible that the fat lady will sing for Hillary Clinton tomorrow. Or not. Sometimes politics is like baseball: you never know what's going to happen." Here's the problem with cliches: this is a horrendous insult to the utopian clarity of baseball. A better sports analogy is probably college football, in which teams have to compete for success as measured by various confusing, media-influenced metrics, and if there's no dominant victor the contest reverts to backroom logrolling and everyone goes home pissed off. Despite Obama's run of victories, Hillary is still very close in delegates. If they split Ohio and Texas tomorrow, as is possible and even likely, will Hillary go down as the 2004 LSU Tigers of Democratic politics?

* Chicagoist's he-said-she-said debate (vote Obama or Green?), incidentally, is a good look at what amateur political pundits are saying about this political race. Professional political observers are useful, but that's not how the world really works.

Damn. It's like the infamous Daisy Girl ad, except it sucks.

Via. Coudal has a hilarious take.

"I've long betrayed my fetish for ground-game organizing. In fact, I'm convinced that the only endorsements that matter are mayors precisely because they have a patronage machine they can deploy on behalf of their endorsed candidate."
--Kos  

I think this, plus the fact that he got his ass kicked so badly by Bobby Rush so early on in his political career, explains a lot about why a plausibly progressive candidate like Barack Obama lines up with the local machine every time. The Democratic party found itself in a bit of a fix, despite eight years of reasonable peace and prosperity under Bill Clinton (and might still be in a fix if it weren't for eight years of staggering Republican incompetence), and it's been suggested that part of the explanation is that neither Clinton nor anyone else did a particularly good job setting up an effective, long-term ground game. They thought competence would win the day! Really.* 

Obama started as an organizer. He knows how the ground game works. And I think that might have something to do with his unwillingness, for better or worse and mostly for worse, to challenge local political structures. I mean, hell, Obama backed Dorothy Tillman, something which has caused progressive locals some bewilderment. I'm still trying to come to grips with that endorsement, and this is the best I've got so far.

*Yes, Karl Rove's trademark 50+1 strategy failed even worse, but he screwed up by totally disregarding competence. If the Republican White House and Congress hadn't managed to completely botch everything as badly as possible, it probably wouldn't have totally blown up in his face.

Finger-pointing for the implosion of Hillary Clinton's campaign continues apace. The popular pick has been Mark Penn, whose microtrends have been no match for Obama's macro appeal, but articles in the Atlantic and The New Republic make a convincing case that Patti Solis Doyle, sister of alderman Danny Solis, hasn't been much help. Michelle Cottle writes in the latter:

Solis Doyle has developed a reputation for mucking around in the weeds, insisting upon signing off on even low-level decisions, such as where to hold a minor event and whether bagels or donuts should be served. (That's not a hypothetical.)

I bet David Axelrod would go with bagels and donuts.

I wouldn't have expected the worst idea from Hillary's mediocre campaign staff to get this much play, but I'm still learning how the game works. I wonder if John McCain's attempt to use public presidential campaign financing as a slush fund will get similar play.

* As you're probably already aware, Super Tuesday didn't really settle anything for the Democrats, so it's time to study up on superdelegates. In short, they're somewhere in between prom committee and the Trilateral Commission: "elected officials and other leaders who vote at the party’s convention but are not selected in primaries." The Google Maps mashup SuperDelegates.org is a good place to keep tabs on what our superdelegates are thinking.

* Unpleasant: "Every time John Edwards mentioned broken workers in mills he'd known, the young crowd watching the debate hooted derisively, 'The mill!, The mill!' Every time Hillary Clinton mentioned her 35 years of experience, they hooted, too." I will confess to have been something of a mark for Edwards, perhaps because his talk of the decline of the southern industrial economy hit home, but as someone (I forget who) remarked, perhaps a requiem for the American dream was not the right stump speech for these times.

* Kos makes a perceptive observation: "As I've said before, the best endorsements are mayors with patronage machines. SoCal is going HUGE for Hillary, and that's because of the L.A. machine working on her behalf. Compare to senators and congressmen which don't have machines, and then take a look at Massachusetts." Perhaps not coincidentally, he spent many of his younger years in Chicago and went to NIU.

* I'm trying not to think about whether machine politicians should have more power than celebrities. 

* Zombie meme sucking my brain: "The Straight Talk Express has driven a straight path long enough that we know it's real."

* "Post-Super day, GOP race has clarity Dems lack." Unquestionably, unless you're a GOP pundit. The McCain juggernaut and yesterday's Huckabee resurgence has the Romney-loving powers that be sick to their stomachs.

* "So spurn me, I voted for Hillary."

About this? This:

I don't care. I don't care that this is an unusually prickly primary season, because it's not. As long as the losing candidate doesn't undermine the nominated candidate in the general election, it just doesn't matter that much. FWIW, Hilzoy at the outstanding blog Obsidian Wings has a very good, substantiative argument for Obama. Whiskey Fire, run by two upstate New York residents, has a good post on why New Yorkers like Hillary. This is why blogs are good.

John Kass writes:

Here are the allegedly racially insensitive remarks:

"This whole thing is the biggest fairy tale I've ever seen," said Bill Clinton in describing Barack's media treatment, which seemed accurate, since most news coverage of Obama ignores Chicago politics and emphasizes instead how he healed the sick and fed thousands of patronage workers with a few loaves of bread and dried fish.

And Hillary dared to note that it took an experienced and crafty President Lyndon Baines Johnson to win Civil Rights legislation for blacks in the 1960s. Naturally, she didn't give Republicans credit for voting for it in Congress.

Well, and there's also the unnamed Clinton "adviser" who called Obama America's "hip black friend," her since-departed campaign co-chairman's references to his drug use, and Andrew Cuomo's perhaps taken-out-of-context use of the phrase "shuck and jive." The Washington Post has a complete rundown. The "fairy tale" thing, incidentally, doesn't have a damn thing to do with race. Whether or not it's a "pattern" or the inevitable result of politics, if you're going to accuse Obama of playing the fabled race card, it's only fair to note he wasn't playing it against a high ten. My friend Ben, blogging at The Private Intellectual, calls this process the New Model Race Bait:

No black politician seeking a cross-racial constituency is advised to yell "racism" too loudly, because white people only identify racism with the likes of Bull Connor. We do not know what racism is and we do not see it around us. So you can capitalize on white racial attitudes without ever saying anything bad about black people. It's a racial politics bank-shot: piss off a few black figures or Obama surrogates who start sounding all touchy and defensive, and instantly you've ramped up white resentment of those whiny blacks. They do the work for you! And if they don't, you can always jettison your shame down to Bill Clinton levels and pretend that they are!

Don't think so? Go back and read Kass's column: "By the time the Sunday papers roll, and the TV talk shows, we'll realize we've transcended nothing, and that we're in the Way Back Machine, knee-deep in the old style Democratic politics of racial symbolism and victimhood."

Which is why I'm glad that Clinton and Obama have declared a truce, just so I don't get a headache that lasts until November.

By the way: "Clinton's style clashes with 'The Rules' of dating." It's even worse than the headline suggests.

I didn't get to see Hillary "choking up... or choking?" until tonight's postgame coverage. I'm calling for instant replay, since it's a close one:

That's it? Forget these "newspapers," I'm watching TV from now on. This is being described as Hillary's "Muskie Moment," in reference to the "crying" "incident" that doomed Ed Muskie in 1972. And it's a great comparison: this is also a crying-related, silly-ass pseudostory that's at best way overplayed and at worst inaccurate.

David Broder, one of the prime movers behind the Muskie story, describes it as "the story that still nags me." Why? Here's how he described Muskie's moment in 1972: "With tears streaming down his face and his voice choked with emotion. . . ." 15 years later, Broder wasn't so sure: "In retrospect, though, there were a few problems with the Muskie story. First, it is unclear whether Muskie did cry." Whoops! Broder says it could have been snow that was "streaming" down Muskie's face. It's like Rashomon, except stupid.

Today the headlines aren't any different, but New Hampshire voters seem to have viewed this event as a reason to like her, a nonstory that doesn't matter, and/or a nonstory that matters in the sense that it's worth it to vote for her just to spite the media (more here, here , here and here). Hillary and her competitors are promising change, but I'm happy to see it coming from voters.

Update: "But Hillary did feel she needed to prove her masculinity. That was why she voted to enable W. to invade Iraq without even reading the National Intelligence Estimate and backed the White House’s bellicosity on Iran."

[snip]

"At her victory party, Hillary was like the heroine of a Lifetime movie, a woman in peril who manages to triumph."

I'm not yet prepared to turn my vote into a protest against Chris Matthews, Maureen Dowd, and all the rest. But: I understand.

Update II: Michael Sneed's column today is actually pretty moving.

There's a lot of time left before November but I think this is already the bottom of the barrel from either side:

"Hillary's aides point to Obama's extremely progressive record as a community organizer, state senator and candidate for Congress, his alliances with "left-wing" intellectuals in Chicago's Hyde Park community, and his liberal voting record on criminal defendants' rights as subjects for examination."

That would be the University of Chicago, that notorious hotbed of crazy extremist liberalism that's done so much to undermine conservative values. Maybe Obama got coffee with Thomas Frank or something.

It's always a bad sign when a presidential candidate's opposition research team is in the news. In an innovative move, Clinton's staff burned Obama by leaking a half-assed research memo, shifting the story from any theoretical wrongdoing by the New York senator to the incompetence of Obama's team. The Tribune is giving a lot of play to the "stupid" memos that tie Clinton (and her husband) to the, um, Indian-American community. Here's more from Talking Points Memo.

Worse, and more embarrassing, was an e-mail sent to reporters that suggested Bill Clinton (who cares?) gave a speech on 9/11 for $100K. Unfortunately, whoever wrote the memo can't tell time.

Leaking your opponent's oppo memo is pretty smooth, and my hat is off to Hillary's team. But picking a tooth-grindingly awful Celine Dion number as your campaign theme song is the total opposite. Shouldn't politics be a lot easier than this?

* Great sneak peek for the new This American Life TV show at Slate, featuring an animation by Chris Ware. Here's hoping they continue to collaborate with Ware and his ilk.

* The Art Institute's most famous poker player, James McManus, analyzes Laura Bush for the Morning News (h/t Bookslut).

* Punk Planet is keeping a butcher's bill of dead indie mags.

* Chicago resurrects a 1994 profile about Hillary's coming of age in Park Ridge.

* If you didn't make it to Austin for SXSW or want to start reliving the memories already, the festival has posted a ton of podcasts and videos. Not much music, but the streaming music player is one of the better Internet radio stations I've heard.