Good point - I think your criticism is correct. The fact that Clinton owes a lot to her husband's political success does not disqualify her from holding office nor does it detract from the historical significance of her campaign vis-a-vis feminism.

Many people are also uncomfortable with the idea of political dynasty (even though I wonder how many of those feel quite alright with the Kennedy dynasty)- a big point of concern being that Clinton's spouse was a president.

But I think you're missing a concern raised in this and other posts: the feminist narrative attached to the Clinton campaign is not the only feminist narrative - it's not indisputable nor complete. There are other narratives out there. Via Ta-Nehisi Coates' blog I found this edge-of-your-seat interview (a moderated debate really) between Gloria Steinem and Melissa Harris Lacewell from January 2008 on democracynow in which Lacewell criticizes what she sees as Steinem's reductionist take on the issue of gender (and race) in the campaign. It's 40 minutes or so but very exciting.

It's a valid point about Pelosi, but I think the degree to which Hillary has depended upon her husband's still great popularity and campaign skills to propel her candidacy is particularly sad (ignoring the moral question if it's even proper for a former president to campaign so aggresively for a particular candidate in the nomination process).

The thing is, I can't think of a case where someone with such little time in government office (7 years) has been anything but the underdog. In contrast, Pelosi has 21 years under her belt.

I really cannot let this go unanswered:

Hillary Clinton said it. A declarative sentence that RFK was assassinated in June. Whether she meant something else by it -- the declarative sentence remains. And when you watch her, she isn't the least bit disturbed that she used the word assassination. And if we're talking context, she had no problem leaving out the context that 1992 started a full 5 weeks later than the primaries started this year, and there are numerous quotes from Bill Clinton campaign operatives, urging his opponent to leave the race. In Clinton's own book, he says he had the nomination sewn up by April. So how much do we give to the person making an intellectually dishonest comparison to begin with?

It's been reported for months that she's staying in the race because "something might happen." Someone of her alleged experience should have known that using the word assassination was inflammatory and potentially dangerous, no matter how she intended it. She has yet to apologize for the anxiety this may have caused the Obama family. McAuliffe said, "Why should she?" That's calloused, cold and insulting.

And today the campaign is outraged over Fr. Pflegler's comments and doing all they can to smear Obama personally because of them. But Obama didn't say them, never has said anything like those comments, and has been a perfect gentleman to Hillary.

And she said "assassination." Take some responsibility.

"Sen. Clinton's statement before the Argus Leader editorial board was unfortunate and has no place in this campaign."

That's the sum total of the Obama campaign's response regarding this issue. Please explain to me how this one sentence is "vilely distorting Hillary’s motives and the supposed effects of the comment."

Sorry but the comment was picked up by the media and the blogs. It got overinflated there. Obama and Axelrod or Burton initially thought it wasn't important enough to respond to. After his first appearance that day, Burton issued the first response that the comment was unfortunate. That the issue didn't belong in the campaign. Eg: this is another 'distraction' from the issues. He again dismissed it the next day. I never saw anything about the Olberman video being sent to major news outlets. It was certainly all over the blogs. There was evidence that Sydney Blumenthal was sending emails to anyone and everyone with the RW slime on Obama, for months.

I was watching this on the net and saw the progression. Politico's John Harris posted an explanation on their role.

I personally understood the emotional reaction at the specific time. The earlier comments were buried and did not get into the news cycles. In the week before, those of us who had live through the 'Kennedy years', were 'primed' with fresh, painful recollections. The rollercoaster of emotions. Inspiration and hope, destroyed not once or twice, but three horrible losses. RFK being the last and most like Obama.

The reaction was as heavy by respectable journalists as bloggers.

This is a statistical analysis of the press releases of the candidates attacking each other. As someone said, Obama has hardly touched Clinton. Especially not compared to her.

I think the ultimate concept we need to focus on is: when are we going to let go of these tit for tat arguements and start getting our ducks in line and ammo ready for McCain?

She was lucky that she got away with it 4 times before she was finally called on it.

It's a strange argument y'all keep advancing - "she did it before and no one was upset!"

Like that makes it right? I find this very strange.

If your teenager got away with setting a grass fire in 4 separate fields before he got caught setting the 5th one, your teenager is a very lucky juvenile delinquent.

Just a hypothetical. Maybe you can see sense, and maybe not.

Hear, Hear! I'm with you and a year younger. Thank you for the post.

You want a Democrat in the White House? Is that what's really important to you?

http://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2008/Clinton/Maps/May30.html

http://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2008/Obama/Maps/May30.html

Add to this the fact that Hillary has garnered more individual votes from the people who will be voting in the general election than Obama. It is of useless consequence that the stupid DNC rules punished FL and MI. The fact remains that they are not banished from the general election vote, and to pretend that they don't exist will be the biggest boneheaded error any Superdelegate could make.

Here's the really sad thing for me...
For months now, I have had two lawn signs ready to go for President. One says Obama, the other Hillary. I am a Hillary supporter, but was fully ready to support Obama if he won the nomination. This last month changed all of that for me. The constant pushing of Obama supporters, the media, and even DNC leaders for Hillary to "drop out gracefully" has made me see that there is serious error in the Democratic party. No one told Bobby Kennedy to drop out gracefully, nor Ted Kennedy, nor McCarthy, even though none of these candidates were even close to having the support that Hillary has right now. The earned delegate difference is very thin. Even the Republicans, who already have a presumptive nominee, are still batting around ideas for a different candidate because so many don't like McCain.

I will write in Hillary Clinton if she is not nominated. After what I've seen of the Democrats, McCain is looking better and better to me, though he'll only get my vote through Obama not getting my vote.

I have many friends, Hillary supporters and long-time liberal Democrats like myself who agree with me and will write in Hillary. There is something very wrong about Obama's campaign, and with Obama himself, that has become increasingly obvious to us over the last month. Every other Democratic candidate had more experience than Obama. There's something fishy goin' on.

I've found the complaints from Clinton backers of being bashed fits the description that Obama gave for Clinton's whining charges: you throw shit at a candidate, and then say he's whining (or, in this case, bashing) when he calls you out on it.

As someone who still finds both centrist candidates to have strong positive qualities and severe down sides in such equal measure so as to make them equivalent, I thank you for making this comment and I agree with it. You are such a brave armchair guerilla to be making it, especially to take on a granny. :-)

I'd also like to add my conclusion about all the reader commentary on TPM since like January. It's that the Clinton supporters HERE on this site are a far more reasonable and interesting bunch. After the software change in February, I started surfing the site by following comments by users who appeared to have interesting and reasonable things to say. And it turned out the majority of those were Clinton supporters. That in no way means that this reflects the situation in real life, it's what is on TPM. What's on TPM is a gang of Obama supporters that chased away the worst examples of Clinton supporters (except for a handful) to other sites. And their legions include many trollish. So lots of pretty distasteful Obama supporters remain as far as interesting reading goes, people I would never want to hang with. They sometimes rail against Clinton supporters saying all these nasty things, but these are straw men and phantoms I don't see on this site, except for a few who only comment and don't post much. What I see on this site is mostly reactive posting by Clinton supporters: a Hillary hater will post with a reaction to something Hillary says, and a Clinton supporter will say in frustration, oh yeah, what about this about Obama? But actual "Obama hating" originating posts were very few and far between, while Hillary hating ones were legion.

In sum, as to the eternal question facing Moms of the world--"who started it?" I really have to say my conclusion is that as far as TPM goes, Obama supporters started it.

I don't know how this affects the election, I seriously doubt it even will. But I know how it affects me: overall, if forced to make a choice, I would rather hang on a site with the Hillary supporters here than with the Obama supporters. They are overall more rational people who write more interesting posts and comments, and that includes you, Armchair Guerilla.

The Obama supporters here formed a gang that got quite trollish at times, and is only coming round now to a little more introspection. Any Hillary trolls have only been reactive to the trollishness of the Obama gangs and Hillary hating gangs. Ironically, the modus operandi of many has been much worse than anything that outrages them about Hillary. (As to the election, I find that I have reacted gut level, childishly and hypocritically this way: I feel myself wishing that Obama would chose her as V.P. just to spite all the nasties I have read on this site. :-))

I don't see the problem rectifying itself much until November. We are now going to move on to a situation where wanting to discuss possible Obama weaknesses like grown ups might will be labeled "bad" and subject to accusations of "GOP troll" or agent provocateur McCain supporter. It's going to get bad again, lots of useless black and white, tit for tat discussion.

I like what Alex39, who I see as one of the "voice of reason" Obama supporters here, has had to say on the topic in a couple of recent posts:

...This isn't just about Hillary. Things go sour whenever we start to treat this site as a substitute for political action -- arguing and recommending blogs as if we were somehow "swinging" public opinion by doing it.

The audience here is small, and more importantly, it's made up of people with unusually firm political opinions. If you wanted to shape public opinion, it would be a better use of time to call your relatives. They're more likely to be undecided. The advantage of TPM is that we actually learn things -- new facts, new perspectives, new questions. That ought to be the main reason we push "recommend."

Posted by Alex39
May 28, 2008 11:00 PM in response to Seriously folks, you can stop writing about how angry Hillary makes you now.

....I will say that Hillary-bashing (and Hillary-fretting) just bores the heck out of me at this point. But rather than preach fiery sermons against it, I have resigned myself to tuning it out. Yea, verily, and so say we all.

Posted at May 30, 2008 12:38 PM in response to Open Letter to the Preachy Obama-supporters

.Obama supporters have had less cognitive dissonance to deal with so far. But don't worry. Once he gets elected and has to govern, everyone will have to come back down to earth and the left will turn back into the usual free-for-all, with no clear right or wrong.

Posted at May 30, 2008 12:24 PM in response to Whence Cognitive Dissonance: A Poem

I'm terribly sorry for the loss of those two young people, and for the difficulties their families and your family face now.

You're right, it's easy to get caught up in the excitement of this primary and forget about the troubles in our day-to-day lives.

Perhaps that's why we all love politics so much - we're avoiding real life.

Or maybe because politics (and who will be in the White House in January) has so much power over each of our daily lives.

Either way, my thoughts are with you.

Indeed it does