readytoblowagasket says that what's happened to me is that I've gone negative on Hillary but that I don't have a positive argument to make on Obama's behalf except that he isn't John McCain.

Now, not being John McCain and not being 847 years old are two very important qualifications for the presidency. But, readytoblow has a point. I haven't made a positive case for Obama here. And I promise this is my last "personal political journey" post. Unlike Mike Huckabee I know not to overstay my welcome.

On policy I've long said that O&H are so close to each other that our arguments about their differences have tended to turn absurd. The question of mandates or not on universal health care can really be boiled down to whether or not everybody should have health care or have reasonable access to it. I want every one to have it. But the libertarian in me likes Obama's position because I also believe that adults should be able to make choices. Besides, universal access is light years ahead of where we are now. Anyway, that's been the most high profile policy division between the two. Obama's health plan is a fine one and worthy of support.


Then we get to the question of judgment. Obama's reaction to the Iraq war was like my own at the time. Now, it's been pointed out that Hillary and Obama basically have the same Iraq voting record, from the time he joined the senate. All right, fair enough. But if you can, as I did, forgive the pro war votes of Hillary Clinton and John Edwards as being reasonable either based on what they were told at the time or as meaningful political calculations, then you can't really fault Obama for voting in favor of funding troops that had already been put into combat without his consent. Yes, some of us would have liked the Democratic congress to defund the war. The truth is that the Bush Administration, which sent people into the war without proper equipment or numbers in the first place, would probably not stop the war because we tried to deny them funding.

Also, we have to credit Obama as a reasonable person and we have to realize that once our troops were in combat, reasonable people could disagree about our moral obligations to our soldiers and to the Iraqi people. Obama never supported the war. His votes after he joined the senate, nearly identical to Hillary's, shouldn't be interpreted as waffling. He was dealing with a situation created for him, not by him. He dealt with it reasonably. He's no Dennis Kucinich but at this point in the race, who is?

So I say Obama does get to fairly claim the judgment mantle.

Then there are the scandals, particularly Rezko. If you look back through my pro Clinton posts I think you'll see that I basically ignored this issue. Because, as far as I can tell, if people made accusations this flimsy against the Clintons in the 1990s, all of us Democrats would have been rightly outraged. Seriously, no matter who you like, if you lived through the 1990s "Blood Sport" years, you should be outraged at the Rezko allegations. There's nothing to them. They're being spread by an opposition party that is in a bathroom stall, Blackberrying Rezko tales, and tapping their feet fervent anticipation of a men's room encounter.

Then there's the issue of whether or not Obama as president will be able to handle the Republicans. Well, for one thing, it is amazing how he has managed to dodge a whole lot of very harmful stuff. Actually, he hasn't dodged anything, he's owned up to them. There was the Wright fiasco. He basically asked us to think about why it was a fiasco and then, as Jon Stewart remarked, he spoke to us about race as if we were adults. It worked. I think that he's going to respond to a lot of Republican attacks by basically saying, "stop being petty," but he won't stoop to such coarse language, he'll instead say that with savoire faire.

But, if style and high mindedness won't handle the Republican attack machine, I have a back-up plan that involves my former girl Hillary. I recently seconded a TPM poster who said that Hillary should be senate majority leader. Reader Louisville called me a hypocrite. But I never said that Hillary can't be a down a dirty fighter. If there's President Barack Obama and Senate Majority Leader Hillary Rodham Clinton then we get to battle the Republicans with the full arsenal.

It can happen, folks.

That's my positive case for Obama, and I still give Hillary a history making role to play. Yes, she made me examine Obama because of what she did. But I'm supporting him while still wishing the best for her.