That's the conventional wisdom -- out with Hillary and the old partisan politics, in with Barack and a new era of bi-partisan statesmanship. Just one problem, their Senate records speak volumes otherwise. Hillary was re-elected overwhelmingly as Senator in New York because she surprised Republicans and won their respect by reaching across party lines. She has a good record of co-sponsorship, and signing on to bi-partisan bills (as does John McCain on the other side, for that matter). Obama, with the most liberal voting record in the Senate, is often the dissenter who opposes bi-partisanship. Read:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/29/AR2008022902784.html

The reason why Obama's voting record in Congress is more liberal than Hillary's is that he favored an independent public integrity office in the senate deemed to be liberal (I guess that would equate conservatism and corruption, which is pretty much how I see it).

So now Hillary supporters are using labels from the Lee Atwater playbook to attack Obama. It must really feel good to dig back 28 years to lift political tactics from the man who gave us Reagan and his two Bushes, before recanting on his deathbed from a brain tumor. Congrats, Hillary, nice work.

"My illness helped me to see that what was missing in society is what was missing in me: a little heart, a lot of brotherhood. The '80s were about acquiring -- acquiring wealth, power, prestige. I know. I acquired more wealth, power, and prestige than most. But you can acquire all you want and still feel empty. What power wouldn't I trade for a little more time with my family? What price wouldn't I pay for an evening with friends? It took a deadly illness to put me eye to eye with that truth, but it is a truth that the country, caught up in its ruthless ambitions and moral decay, can learn on my dime. I don't know who will lead us through the '90s, but they must be made to speak to this spiritual vacuum at the heart of American society, this tumor of the soul."

- Lee Atwater, 1991

Many have indicted the surprisingly successful campaign of Barack Obama as empty and superficial, the stuff of cheap marketing ploys and mere sophistry. I contend that he is attempting to fill the very void that Atwater described.

The most cynical part of me sees the Democratic primary as this choice: Behind door number one, there is more of the same. Triangulation, calculation, vicious partisanship, corporatism. Behind door number two is a possibility. Not a guarantee, but a possibility. Will Barack Obama indeed come to fill this vacuum? Only time will tell, but what choice is there? I can tell you that neither Hillary Clinton nor John McCain will.

I'm not a gambler, but when I've dabbled in it I've learned that caution rules the day. I have friends who gamble that like to say, "You have to bet big to win big." Truly, you also have to bet big to lose big. I don't contest that Obama represents a gamble of sorts. He is relatively young, his career relatively brief, but the last seven years have shown us that a gilded resume does not a leader make. Who had a better resume than Donald Rumsfeld? Or Dick Cheney?

At the end of the day, I see the choice between Obama and Clinton as a choice between a most certain continuation of our current trajectory and the possibility of charting a new course. Perhaps Barack Obama will turn out to be just like Hillary Clinton. Perhaps he is only paying lip service to the ideals that he describes. Perhaps he will only concern himself with the interests of power and not the interests of people. But if this does turn out to be the case I do not see how we have lost anything. We have no alternatives and we will not get another chance like this again.

There are forces at work right now that will most assuredly make these discussions impossible in the future. I take it as a terrible omen that the success of Starbucks is flagging. This might sound silly, but it represents that the days of American excess, of vast amounts of cheap money, are coming to a close. We must tighten our belts. We must become educated and industrious. We must get out of debt and learn to live much, much leaner lifestyles. Petroleum is only going to get more expensive and more scarce and this will undermine everything that we attempt to do.

I don't think we'll get another opportunity to take a chance on someone like Barack Obama. I expect the election in 2012 to be one that will be conducted on completely different terms. The story then will not be Iraq, it will be Iran, Russia and China. The 21st century will be defined by competing geostrategies that endeavor to control the last vestiges of petroleum on planet Earth. The cabal that has been running our government for the last seven years has already begun our first moves in this new era. This is what is meant by a "New American Century." When Dick Cheney says that our "way of life is not negotiable" he is not talking about fast food and faster cars. If you think that the fear exhibited in the wake of 9/11 was startling, just wait until we're engaged head on with Iran. Kyl-Lieberman is not simply some token piece of legislation. Ahmadinejad has been in Iraq this week and this will continue. Personally, I wouldn't be surprised if we find ourselves in conflict with Iran before the year is out. If you don't think Hillary Clinton's vote on Kyl-Lieberman is significant, think again. If you think she merely exhibited poor judgment in her votes on the Iraq war, think again. These facts are not unknown to her.

It is of the utmost importance that we are united in facing these challenges. I suspect that those who have so easily written off the leadership skills that Obama has exhibited in this campaign simply do not understand that a continuation of the politics that we've seen in the Bush-Clinton-Bush era will cost us more than they imagine. It's not just a matter of liberals and conservatives bickering on websites. This will come to to look like a frivolous luxury in the days ahead. Fellow blogger clearthinker has observed that he thinks the discussion of health care won't even last until November. If we start to see gasoline move above $4/gal. this summer I think he will be proved correct.

None of the minor policy differences between Obama and Clinton are relevant in the slightest. What matters is who will be able to lead. Some have observed that Obama bears some similarities to Reagan, but they seem to mean this as some sort of slur against him. I say, good. That's what we need right now.

I couldn't agree more! When Clinton said something like, "Make no mistake, there are men in caves plotting to hurt us," she had gone over to the Dark Side. She sounds and acts like a Republican, and her little smear about Obama's Christianity, "as far as I know," was the capper for me.

As for quoting scripture? I don't need faith for this election because of what I've seen. I've seen Clinton help get us into a war that will cost three trillion dollars according to a Nobel Laureate who has penetrated the lies and distortions of Pentagon budgets and administration reports. I've seen her act like a demagogue when she voted for the Defense of Marriage Act and the anti flag-burning amendment. Both of these were loathsome sops to the right wing, and utterly shameful. Yes, if she's the nominee, I'll have to vote for her because McCain is dangerous, but I will do so reluctantly. I have lost all respect for her over the course of the campaign.

If there are enough skeletons in Obama's closet for Hillary to defeat him in the primary, what do you think that the Republicans would do to him in the general?

Obama has a long history with Rezko that has not been fully investigated and which Obama has done his best to obfuscate -- you can't google 'a certain individual' but you can google Tony Rezko and it is worthwhile. Obama should not have run until he was able to tell a straight story about that relationship. So far he has not.

Obama is the one who maintained for a week that no one in his campaign had met with the Candadians. Now either the senior official in his campaign omitted to tell the campaign or Obama thought we would buy the line that the senior official was acting under his alternate capacity as a professor. All of this is Obama -- not Clinton.

Obama is the one who has disunited this party. Some can see through him and some can't.

The skeletons you need to worry about are Hillary's. So far, Obama supporters are trying to play nice and follow his example. Some with more success than others. My copy of the Obama volunteer handbook contains explicit instructions that we are not to speak disparagingly of other candidates. His wishes on this point are crystal clear. But...I don't think discipline can hold for much longer. Pretty soon, the people who know where the Clinton's bury their secrets are going to start speaking out.

Her supporters have been complaining with very little to complain about. I hope they are ready to stand the heat. It's coming.

Rezko = Whitewater.

It's a shame after 16 years of Democrats defending the Clintons against the sham that was Whitewater, we're right back at it. This time, the Clintons playing the part of Jeff Gerth and the Arkansas Project. They say there are "unanswered questions" and "suspicious timelines" but just like with Whitewater, there is no accusation - let alone proof - that Obama did anything wrong.

Welcome back to 1992. Brought to you by Hillary Clinton.

HRC is a loser and she's acting like a sore one. It's sad she wants to take the party and the country down with her.

I've had a slightly uneasy feeling about Senator Clinton with respect to her identifying with and "feeling the pain" of out-of-work laborers. Maybe it's because she started out a Republican--indeed, she was President of the Wellesley Young Republicans while in college. You know the old Francois Guisot (1787-1874) quote: "Not to be a republican at twenty is proof of want of heart; to be one at thirty is proof of want of head."

The longer this campaign goes on, the more I feel that Senator Clinton has no heart. Particularly when she employs Rove's tactic of perpetuating half-truths and innuendos about Obama. Then when the accusations are disproved, it doesn't matter--the person's reputation has been irreversibly tarnished. Mission accomplished.

P.S. I did vote for Senator Clinton in a Super Tuesday primary, but I now regret it.

Today should be interesting but the media-hyped momentum that HRC and co have spun seems to be tip ping the scales. Then we'll be reading tomorrow morning about the big "win" where a candidate who was up by double-digits a couple weeks ago (her) barely scrapes by. I guess that's because she's such a fighter...

Let's just keep her fighting spirit in perspective for a bit: it got her to fail miserably with her health care initiatives when she was First Lady. Then her fighting spirit got her to win two cakewalk senatorial elections here in NY - the first against a last minute replacement for Rudy Giuliani (who would have given her a real fight for the Junior Senator seat) and then a re-election in 2006 against another virtual nobody: the Mayor of Yonkers. So what major victories can she really claim to so far? Carpetbagging and riding Bill's coattails seem to be the spunk that stakes her political victories.

That "fighting spirit" she peddles is synonymous with her divisiveness, which, for me, is the key factor when having to choose between two candidates who by and large are identical in a policy debate. If there were any question whether or not HRC is a divisive character, let's just see what this scorched earth strategy does to the party she thinks will rally around her after she's ripped it to pieces bashing and attacking a good candidate and his supporters.

Just like the emperor's new clothes, if the emperor is really naked, then we say that the emperor is naked. If Hillary is acting like a Republican with her super negative ad campaign, doctored photos of Obama, and flat out lies, all which lack integrity, then she is a Republican except in name. And come November she will be treated like a Republican.

Hiya,
Some good posts here. I wanted to address the issue of Obama holding fire against Hillary. What about the refusal of Hillary to release her tax returns? They must be pretty damaging, since releasing tax returns is pretty standard for presidential candidates. And, it's not like she didn't expect to face the moment. So despite all the laundering and obfuscation possible, she still is holding on.
And what about her First Lady records, including the calendars? What will the calendars show?
Obama left these up to the media, which has basically given Hillary a pass. If it was me, I'd show up at every debate with a copy of my tax returns, point out they've been made public for "X" months, and ask Hillary for a reason hers are hidden and a date certain they'll be disclosed.
So, yes, Obama is doing quite a bit for the unity of the party, and getting kicked around by Hillary ("as far as I know") Rodham Clinton.