That is about what we have worked ourselves into...For Senator Obama to win, we need to turn someone, who has dedicated her life to political ends we can be proud of, into something close to the Devil. (We in this community are very energized by Senator Obama and probably will feel that regardless of the possible outcome of the primaries that he is the one and best choice.) I don't like this narrative any more than I think the Republicans are right in demonizing the Clinton family. There are many more reasons for the Republicans to viciously attack our party than for our party to be uncivil while we make our choices. We have a very clear difference in perceptions, values and hopes for this nation.
I think that if you read what is now written on this site you must begin to wonder if there has been a change from the even handed and constantly critiqued approach of analysis to one more guided a partisan need to win and see only what we want to see.
From here in California, I hope that we make the right choice because the last seven years have been hell for our nation, the world and especially Iraq. As much as I am annoyed at Mark Penn's nonsense and what I can only call the overly careful language of Senator Clinton, I am not prepared to destroy her career and tag her campaign as being only ruled by seeking political power and basically corrupt. She does need to campaign as if every thing she says will be used against her in both fair and very unfair ways should she win our nomination. She could have done with it with more grace.
As for Senator Obama, he continues to build great momentum and I can only hope that, if he wins our nomination , that he holds up as well under the Republican loupe as Senator Clinton has. He is a breath of fresh air at a time we have only felt frustration and anger. I can imagine that many independents and even moderate Republicans will give him a real look. McCain will look very tough in contrast and will also appeal to independents but perhaps in a different way. He seems more solid and in ways, both good and bad, more of a known quantity. McCain's flip flopping will challenge his straight shooter mystique.Anyone up for a 100 year war?
In the end we need to end up with a unified party to win in 2008. Everything we write and do should be focused on that. We have much more in common with each of our two candidates than with any on the other side if go issue by issue.
Some thoughts to consider in closing in a quote from Paul Krugman:
I won’t try for fake evenhandedness here: most of the venom I see is coming from supporters of Mr. Obama, who want their hero or nobody. I’m not the first to point out that the Obama campaign seems dangerously close to becoming a cult of personality. We’ve already had that from the Bush administration — remember Operation Flight Suit? We really don’t want to go there again.
What’s particularly saddening is the way many Obama supporters seem happy with the application of "Clinton rules" — the term a number of observers use for the way pundits and some news organizations treat any action or statement by the Clintons, no matter how innocuous, as proof of evil intent.
The prime example of Clinton rules in the 1990s was the way the press covered Whitewater. A small, failed land deal became the basis of a multiyear, multimillion-dollar investigation, which never found any evidence of wrongdoing on the Clintons’ part, yet the "scandal" became a symbol of the Clinton administration’s alleged corruption.
During the current campaign, Mrs. Clinton’s entirely reasonable remark that it took L.B.J.’s political courage and skills to bring Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream to fruition was cast as some kind of outrageous denigration of Dr. King.
And the latest prominent example came when David Shuster of MSNBC, after pointing out that Chelsea Clinton was working for her mother’s campaign — as adult children of presidential aspirants often do — asked, "doesn’t it seem like Chelsea’s sort of being pimped out in some weird sort of way?" Mr. Shuster has been suspended, but as the Clinton campaign rightly points out, his remark was part of a broader pattern at the network.
I call it Clinton rules, but it’s a pattern that goes well beyond the Clintons. For example, Al Gore was subjected to Clinton rules during the 2000 campaign: anything he said, and some things he didn’t say (no, he never claimed to have invented the Internet), was he
Paul Krugman February 11, 2008