Senator Hillary Clinton picks John McCain over Senator Obama, for President. I guess she will not be looking for any support from those who have voted for Senator Obama. Watch her disparage a fellow Democrat, and praise the Republican.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ou4JnWQsxKw&eurl=http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0308/Clinton_on_Obama_and_McCain.html

Hey!

It's the last days of the campaign; they're stirring the bottom of the barrel -- looking for that guy on "60 Minutes" who'd like to vote for Obama except he's heard Obama's a Muslim and doesn't know all the words to the national anthem. NAFTA in Canada may just be the straw that breaks that camel's back.

Give her a break, why dontcha!

The memo IS a smoking gun. Just the fact that there was any kind of conversation between the Obama camp and the Canadians on NAFTA in the context of the Ohio debate is utterly damning. What Obama had to say in Ohio should have been good enough for the Canadians or anyone else who cared to listen in.
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Look, Obama is a deeply compromised pol and has been from day one. Read the NYT's story on Obama and Tony Rezko, a rotten relationship that lasted years at a time when everyone in Illinois knew that Rezko was absolutely radioactive. This stuff has been reported in the Chicago press for months. Wake up.
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Chicago and Illinois politics are deeply, deeply corrupt, and Obama is purely a product of this system. I wish it weren't the case. I wish we had clean government here, or--failing that--that the corruption was Republican rather than Democratic. But here we are, trapped in a filthy, mobbed-up system, helpless to do anything about it.
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Don't get me wrong. There's a lot of enthusiastic support for Obama in Chicago, the hometown guy. Partly, though, this is a function of race (not exactly a healthy thing, if you ask me), and partly it's a function of people's hopelessness, the sense that we'll never emerge from the dungeon so we may as well root for our favorite captors.
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I do wish, though, that folks on the outside would pay some attention. I know how difficult that must be for progressives, who'd rather not point out the inconvenient fact that the Chicago machine--a reliable source of Democratic votes in national elections--is so dirty. If the national press would just hold up a mirror, maybe we could embarrass these characters out of office.

Michael,

you don't have enough experience to write on this subject.

Jimi Hendrix was the original post-partisan:

If you can just get your mind together
Then come on across to me
We'll hold hands and then we'll
watch the sunrise
from the bottom of the sea
But first, are you experienced?
Have you ever been experienced?
Well, I have

I don't know about you, but I like the idea of watching the sunrise from the bottom of the sea. If only our politicians could get beyond partisan politics and embrace this reality.

No one imagines Hillary and McCain are squeaky clean, far from it. All I'm saying is that Obama is no better and quite probably a bit worse than the others, even though his chief sales pitch is that he's somehow an agent of change. This obviously isn't the case, as anyone who takes an honest 5 minutes and looks into his background will see.
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So, we're in happy agreement on that much, right, Michael? Good, then we're all squared away here.

The hell with politics - wasn't the last season of "Curb Your Enthusiasm" one of the best written comedy series of all time? Without a doubt Larry David is the master of the big build, isn't he? He set up the gag in the first episode and then played it out until the very end and I mean the end of the series. Any other comedy writer would be tempted to overplay it or give it away too soon, but David has the patience and the talent to let a little line out and then reel us back in, let a little more line out and reel back in with the big payoff at the end.

His visuals are masterpieces too - The doctor's living room was priceless as was the cemetery with the barbed wire enclosing it. The only other writers who even approach David's skill are Ricky Gervais and Steve Merchant, but Gervais still can't let his character remain selfishly human to the end. He has to put some kind of redeeming virtue in play, which is okay, but it made the ends of the series predictable. David doesn't do that though, he has a knack for keeping his characters in character - David remains so consistently selfishly neurotic that surprisingly when he does just what he would predictably do, you're caught off guard. You can't imagine anyone so lacking in boundaries and filters that he could continue along the same path. The viewer expects him to have some limit, any kind of limit and pull back at the moment of truth - but he can't. And that is what makes it so funny. Would you not agree?

Well you've already said "Rhoda" is your all time favorite sitcom. I didn't expect YOU to agree.

Berube clearly doesn't understand the difference between soil that has been depleted of nutrients by over-cultivation (dirt of clinton), and virgin soil that holds the promise of abundant harvests for seasons to come (dirt on Obama).

And while he may be from Chicago, and has already heard all the dirt on Obama, guess what Mike? The rest of the country isn't Chicago.

"The rest of the country isn't Chicago."

I believe the cynical, wind-worn, world-weary, dare-I-say... experienced choice of a negative, present-tense verb is "ain't" - you almost had me!

You, sir, are no Raymond Chandler! Or Jack Kennedy!

Michael:

Great commnetary, but explain to us the verb tense mood difference. I think you're on to something here...

Michael
What I don't get about you is this: you say you know Chicago politics and how corrupt it is. You don't deny that Obama is not some sort of "exception". Fair eough.

So Obama plays "hardball" politics, Chicago style. The problem is his choice of public personae is this "clean as a whistle, transcendent, unifying, problem solver" and then--as was inevitable--all his shady deals come out. It is a big fall.

Hillary never pretended to be "Ms Tammy Wynette". Her public personae has been one of a hard working problem solver and she has more or less lived up to that characterization. Fair or unfair, the public is feeling a little let down by Obama’s faux
saintliness. It does start to look like “cheap talk”

One thing is certain Hillary can play hard ball with the best of the guys and she has proved it. Good for her. She never claimed--like Obama--that she was as pure as the driven snow, so she is not—unlike Obama-- beholden to “play nice”.

You are infuriated that THAT WOMAN would say such a thing (re: experience less than McCain). Hey stick to literature then, this is politics. I think it is a hoot myself

Michael Bérubé completely misses the point.

The amendments that have been suggested, basically modifying trade agreements to factor in the environment, labor standards, and other specific protections under the unbrella of "fair trade" are the same amendments now as were amendments suggested in the 90's when NAFTA was being discussed in the first place.

The difference is the Clintons ignored the warnings and derided the critics for suggesting such amendments would be necessary, because according to the Clintons the magic of free markets didn't require such protections for labor or the environment. Had it not been for the ideological blindness of the Clintons, along with surrogates like Paul Krugman, we could have had a North American FAIR Trade Agreement passed in the 90s and not have lost tens of thousands of jobs and seen such tremendous worker exploitation and environmental pollution.

The question is: how many times can the Clintons fool people? They were supposedly well intentioned and pro-labor and pro-environment then too. Only they weren't.

what precisely did you imagine my point to be?

now there's a trick question if I ever heard one....have you not already remarked above the many tragic displays of irony deficiency *amemia? At long last, sir, have you no compassion??

*(the absence of "memes", a foundation is in formation, your donations welcome)

I just wanna know how it is that Clinton gets to claim 25 years of experience, gets to count trips made to 80 foreign countries as First Lady as some kind of diplomatic undergirding.

And then gets to act as NAFTA was implemented by Reagan. If she's gonna run on Bill's administration's record, then she has to defend NAFTA. And she's gotta say why, this time, it doesn't count--even though the way the bill got passed was doing what she criticizes Obama for naively talking about doing, finding common ground with republicans.

I do not see how this remains a winning issue for her. She can't pull this one off again too late in the press cycle for Obama to respond.

The tragedy of overinflated "hope" is that it always leads to disappointment. Like Sisyphus, the legitimate struggle for a better way trapped in an eternal cycle of hope and disappointment. That's why the Obamas of the world are dangerous and bad for us.