In terms of substantive differences between Clinton and Obama, everything is chicken feed compared to Iraq--by which I mean Iraq 2003 rather than Iraq 2009+.  In fact, to the extent that Obama's campaign claims or implies differences about Iraq 2009+, it's because they say that Clinton can't be trusted because of 2003, which is a fair point to raise and it's up to Clinton to parry it.

Iraq 2003 is pretty clear: Obama opposed the war, Clinton supported it.  The war has been a disaster.  Point Obama, not to trivialize things!  But apart from the obvious advantage of being vindicated by events (and I'll have a P.S. about that), the way it's gone down has left Obama in a weird and enviable position: he just has to say that he opposed it, and he's done.  In this diary I'm not going to claim, as some anti-Obama diaries have recently and falsely claimed, that Obama really wasn't an opponent of war after all; that's just silly.  However, I am going to dig a little deeper about what his opposition to that "dumb war" meant then, and means now.

That would, of course, be after the jump.

Stanley Fish is an interesting character.  He pioneered a new kind of literary criticism (which I won't describe because I don't understand it), and made the leap from iconoclastic professor to iconoclastic dean, which doesn't happen every day.  He takes the observer-from-Mars perspective as well as anyone writing about academia, politics, or culture in this country today.  In today's New York Times he writes about hatred of Hillary Clinton, and he brings that perspective to bear on something that most of us are unable to see in a fresh way.

http://fish.blogs.nytimes.com/...

In no particular order.

1. Health care coverage for everyone, no exceptions.

2. Compromise with Republicans if and when she has to, not because it's a virtue--because it's not.

3. We really do have enemies in the world, and she knows that more than Obama does.

4. A majority of Americans supported the Iraq War, but now think it is a disaster and want to get out.  In other words, their trajectory is Clinton's, not Obama's.

5. Genuinely interested in, and knowledgeable about, the details of policy and of the political process.

I'll keep going below the jump.

It's frequently said by DK diarists and commenters that one factor in their support for Obama over Clinton is that he'd attract more support from independents and Republicans than she would.  A related claim is that an Obama candidacy would encourage Republicans to stay in what we assume will be a fractious and lethargic state following their very divisive primary race (especially since the likely candidate is hated by much of the activist base), while a Clinton candidacy would galvanize them and encourage them to work like the dickens to defeat her.

This stuff has both a political and an ethical component, and it's the ethical one that I want to talk about.  

For several months I have invested a good deal of time and energy defending Hillary Clinton from attacks on this site, and more recently I have defended Bill as well, once he became a player in the campaign and started attracting criticism.  I've parried all kinds of attacks on them: that they're callous self-centered triangulators, that they have no loyalty, that they're willing and eager to appeal to our Dark Side, including racism, to get what they want.  

But I am through defending them. I have thought about this a lot over the last couple of days, and I've reached my decision.

More after the jump.

You know the quote-- "Those whom the Gods would destroy, they first call promising." Cyril Connolly, 1938.  Thank you, Google!

Obama is nothing if not promising...it is stunning that he can promise, without irony, a new politics that will produce all the benefits of liberal government (or at least most of them) without any of the rancor that even tepid efforts at liberal reform have brought.  My gut says this belongs with "eat all you want and lose weight!" and "cheap unlimited energy from discarded styrofoam cups!"  

But we live in an age of wonders.  Tiny little computer chips power this whole shouting match we've been having here, and I've heard they make some more interesting and important things possible as well.  My doctor prescribes a little pill that doesn't keep the weight off, but it keeps my cholesterol down.  What's so implausible about Obama fashioning a broad and sustainable coalition in support of goals usually only identified with part of that coalition?  

Since I do everything ass-backwards, I get into lengthy disquisitions about my own thinking in my comments about other peoples' diaries, but I'm devoting my first-ever diary to a link to something that's not mine at all.

http://www.newyorker.com/...

George Packer's new New Yorker piece on Hillary Clinton's philosophy and style, as opposed to Barack Obama's.  The piece is more about Clinton than it is about Obama, so he doesn't get as much attention, but beyond that it looks pretty fair-minded to me.  Those who like and dislike Clinton will find something to suit them, although those who detest her with a passion probably won't.  After the jump, I'll say a bit more, if only to justify posting an actual diary :)