Obama bloggers regularly attack Clinton's "win at any cost strategy," when it seems clear they are employing just such a strategy.

This bothers me more than the hypocrisy, which is pretty much a given in politics.  It's all part of turning politics into a sporting event.  And if you've ever played any organized sports, you know that no team ever claims the other team was unfairly fouled.

I have a lot of concerns with either of the candidates but ended up choosing Hillary because I find her a hard-working, extremely smart, pragmatist. I don't like nor want ideologues running things. They find ways to justify the means to get their end that frighten me.

I've heard too many empty promises from too many candidates over the years to believe ANY of them.

 Remember the rhetoric before the 2006 elections? We listened, we voted for them and the incompetent and/or corrupt people we elected to end the war have continued to fund it every time it came up for a vote. And that includes Obama and Clinton. Now they want our vote again because this time, really, this time they'll finally end the war. At least McCain is honest about it.

But the deal-breaker for me is the FL and MI mess. I cannot, I will not support or vote for a candidate that disenfranchises voters. There are some stenches that even a well held nose won't cover.

Well fine, that's a minor distinction that I wouldn't necessarily base my support on, except for all the fawning, Dem-insider support and donations the campaign is extracting based on attracting college students.

That's been a huge selling point Obama's been using for himself and Obama's holding the college vote up too to propel him forward as the candidate for the future.

Aside from the outcry the campaign leveled at Sen. Clinton (and the MSM ran with that) merely for taking a softly worded question, they need to apply the same standard to the worse "outrage" of Michelle Obama plucks Asian-Americans and African-Americans literally out of the picture. (I'm not shocked by stage-managing, but Team Obama's eating a lot of lunch off this and can't have his cake and eat it too here.)

This protection is not available to Hillary.  They throw all the accusations of lying, etc. etc.  it's ok, and somehow that is not going to hurt her.  Which makes the point that Obama is a weak candidate, and Hillary can handle the kitchen sink.  

This one is usually combined with the she cannot win cause the polls say she has lots of negatives, but the polls that show Obama cannot get the white vote, somehow don't count.  

I am sure it's all politics and I probably do some of those contortions but these are two that seem rather obvious.  

It's being reported nearly everywhere else that this is just the case.

I agree that opinionated debate should be civil and focussed on the issues. And, despite rampant and gratuitous character-assasination, hypocrisy, and way too much moralizing, a lot of substantive debates are going on all over the b-sphere.

Taylor Marsh is a friend of the blog and I have criticized her in comments. But I respect the blog proprietor's views. what I like about Taylor over the others though is that she is unabashed and open about her blatant partisanship.

I won't bite. Nothing to say about his shameless hypocrisy?

Will the Obama police be encouraged to catch these "racists"?
These are indeed slippery slope and scary times.

Obama is a type B personality in his role: Inspire others to do their best.

Of course everything is stage managed to perfection.  Witness Bush and his loyal, cheering crowds in 2004.

They wanted white people?  Why?  Does it create a pleasing visual contrast or does Obama just want to eliminate any possibility of being branded as the "black candidate" as opposed to the universally generic candidate?  Are white people generic?

There is no moral high ground to speak of.  Everybody has succumbed to the urge.  Even those who claim they have not.  Sometimes especially those who claim they have not.

At the end of the day, we have two admirable candidates who have said and done some less than admirable things in the course of their campaigns.  Neither of them would be a disaster as president, in my opinion, and would each do much more good than harm for the country.  Compared to the GOP candidate, the differences on policy are fairly minor, but since the stakes are high, every subtle difference of policy, personality and campaign strategy gets amplified beyond all proportion, and every perceived blunder, slight, smear or misstatement becomes either "disastrous for candidate X" or "the reason why I can never support candidate Y".  

It's one thing for a photographer to rearrange the subjects to account for various aesthetics including height, weight, clothing, and even gender.  It's acceptable for a campaign advertisement created in a studio to adjust the cast of actors for even more broader issues.

It's another for a campaigner to be calling either a) we need more whites in the photo, or b) we need more blacks in the photo when this is done at a live, real life event.  That's not rearranging existing subjects, that's creating an entirely new message.

I think that's an appalling practice that should be condemned regardless of who is doing that.

Remember how we got pissed off with Bush for photoshopping in soldiers in a 2004 campaign ad?  It's the same thing.

Apparently, her "failure" to rehash the good old Lewinsky era witch hunt is becoming a feature of college appearances.

(I have no idea about coordinating here, or from whom, but they should be disavow these sleazy tactics here as basic principle, as TeamObama has rushed to capitalize on HRC's (a) campaign "health", (b) exploited their own ability to engage a reliable new vote to the process and (c) flogged the marquee selling point of themselves as harbingers of a new post-partisan Unity with the Right Wing.)

If this is OT driftwood, delete this and I'll repost it in an Open Thread. It just strikes me that the more desperate TeamO is becoming to seal the deal -- hold up on the last chorus of Here I am Baby, Signed Sealed Delivered, Not Yet -- the more baldly apparent the cheesy magic tricks become.

'Other Woman' Shadows Chelsea Clinton
By TOM DAVIES - [April 08 2008]

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) -- Chelsea Clinton is spending long days on the campaign trail telling college crowds about her mother's positions on everything from health care and student-loan costs to the Darfur crisis and gay rights.

But there is one subject she will not discuss -- "The Other Woman."

At least three times in the past two weeks, the former and possible future first daughter has been asked about the Monica Lewinsky scandal's influence on the presidential campaign of her mother, New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.

The answer has evolved each time.

When a student at Butler University in Indianapolis first asked the question on March 25, she drew applause and gave a short response that ended with: "I do not think that is any of your business."

Clinton, 28, since has been less blunt, though the message is much the same.

"I think that is something that is personal to my family, I'm sure there are things that are personal to your family that you don't think are anyone else's business, either," she said last week when asked during a visit to North Carolina State University in Raleigh. "But also on a larger point, I don't think you should vote for or against my mother because of my father."

Many in the crowd at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind., booed Monday when a question about the impeachment proceedings against President Clinton came up. Chelsea Clinton quickly summed up her position: "If that's what you want to vote on, that's what you should vote on. But I think there are other people (who are) going to vote on things like health care and economics," she said.

Amanda Morris, president of Purdue's Students for Hillary chapter, said Tuesday that she approved of the audience reaction and how Clinton is responding. She also expects the question might keep coming up.

"I really think it has gotten to the point where it is the attention thing," said Morris, a sophomore from Kokomo, Ind. "At first, maybe that student really wanted to know what she thought about it. But by now it's 'Oh, that person got attention for it, I'm going to keep asking.'"

Philippe Reines, a Clinton campaign spokesman, said Chelsea Clinton has made 99 campus appearances through Tuesday, and typically has taken 10 to 20 questions at each stop. He said the Lewinsky matter was not a burning issue among the people who have attended. [...more...]

The first one, she calls every male around Hillary a bunch of "slick, geeky weasels or rancid, asexual cream puffs.", along with a host of other venomous bile.

The second post of hers, she says "I believe that, because of his international heritage and upbringing, Obama is the right person at the right time."