No question, the campaign that Clinton has run against has had some pretty despicable moments. Those underhanded tactics were the reason I stopped admiring Hillary. I wrote about this in my diary last week.
As frustrating as these tactics have been, it may be that they were necessary, and may put Obama in a stronger position then he would have been otherwise.
One of Clinton's arguments has been that she was press tested. She seems to think that her closets had been checked for skeletons so completely that the combined CSI talents of Las Vegas, Miami and New York could not find a bone fragment. The argument did have some validity, because she has been in the public eye for so long, and since Richard Scaif put a fortune into digging up those skeletons that her past had been picked over like a Thanksgiving Turkey if you have teenage boys in the house. (At least if it's like Thanksgiving with my family)
Obama is new enough to the system that he hasn't had that kind of vetting. No news organization had taken the time to completely dig through his past, especially since his Senate race in 2004 became so easy after the Republican was revealed to have asked his wife to perform sexual acts in front of his friends. (The wife, by the way, was Jeri Ryan, who played 7 of 9 on Star Trek Voyager. This proves the little known political adage that you do NOT mess with the Borg, especially when there is a messy divorce. Resistance is Futile. ) The Republican party put up Alan Keyes to run against Obama, and he was smooshed by 40 points.
Had Obama followed his win in Iowa with another in New Hampshire, then he probably would have done a little better in Nevada, add that to his sweeping win in South Carolina, and he may have ended up clinching the nomination months ago. If that had happened, then there would have been no one doing the digging on Obama until the general election.
Because of the Clinton's campaign kitchen sink strategy of sending every little bit of dirt they could find, and doing it after it was so late in the process, a lot of the news that could have been devastating in October was boring by the time Pennsylvania rolled around. The thing is, with the way delegates have been apportioned, most of the stuff came too late to really ave much chance of changing the math. As despicable as the rumor mongering was, it does mean that Obama's closets have been examined by someone, and the small bones in there, possible belonging to mice, have been swept out. If Wright's sermons had been playing 24/7 on cable news around Halloween, they could have done some real damage. But that story did give Obama the platform to give one of the best speeches on race this country has seen in 40 years. Nothing besides Wright has been able to stick much, except that about a fifth of the electorate believe he is a Muslim (I note that a lot of conservative commentators always refer to the church as "Trinity" or "Trinity United" rather then its full name Trinity United Church of Christ, perhaps trying to keep both things in people's heads at once. After all, Muslims rarely names their mosques after Jesus)
We know from past experience that the Republicans will attack the Democrat using their strengths. But at least now people are used to the things that have some validity to them. Obama is no longer so green, not an unknown entity, and has proven that he has a thick skin for criticism, and will respond quickly and effectively to it. It's nasty, but it may help him in the long run.
The heated primary has also spurred voter registration drives all over the country, putting the Democratic Party in a stronger position in November even in non swing states. How many people registered to vote that live in states where they feel their vote doesn't matter, so they never bothered to register? No that they are registered, congressional races, and even local races, have a larger pool of Democrats to bring out, helping to make more local races viable for the Democrats. That would not have happened if the Primaries had been essentially over by Super Tuesday.