Everyone at TPM should donate money to John McCain if he does what Joe Klein is speculating about here and makes Jeb Bush his running mate.

It would be a delightful disaster.  John, are you listening?  If you agree to take Jeb onto your ticket, I will give you money!  Heck, Obama himself would probably donate.

Could you imagine?

Sigh, McCain is probably just shy of senile enough to fall for this.

I just got off the phone with a nice representative in Senator Clinton's office.  She confirms that Senator Clinton opposes the current FISA bill and any retoractive immunity for telecoms.  I asked if she would appear in the Senate to oppose or filibuster and they said her schedule hasn't been released.  I pointed out that she has agreed to a joint campaign appearance with Senator Obama on Friday June 27th and the representative did confirm that Senator Clinton isn't unavailable on vacation or anything like that.  So, no promises.  But they admit that she isn't away on some post election seclusion retreat as some have implied.

Might be a good idea if more called Clinton and really push on the issue of her making a campaign appearance with Obama.  I'd like to see them make a far more important appearance together on the Senate Floor.

(202) 224-4451
Don't be afraid to call, they're nice.

Of course, Senator Obama (202) 224-2854
needs to take the leadership role on this since he's our leader as we head into battle with the McCaininites.

But, there were also two other Senators who ran for president who promised to oppose telecom immunity.  Chris Dodd (who made it an issue in the first place and can be thanked at (202) 224-2823) and Joe Biden (202) 224-5042.

Let's get the Democratic Primary Class of 2008 together in the Senate! That's true party unity.

The Democratic leadership in the Senate has caved under pressure from a lame duck president and the telecom lobby.  Our party is considering a quick vote on a bill that will immunize the telecoms from the consequences of breaking the law at Bush's request between 2001-2007.

Not only does this reward telecoms for breaking laws that were put in place to protect our privacy but it sets the dangerous precedent that the law is whatever the president says it is.  All the telecoms have to do to get immunity is prove that the president told them it was legal.  That's it.

Our leaders have abdicated their responsibility.

Except that, as I keep hearing, we have a new leader now.  This is Barack Obama's party.  He needs to stand up for it with a filibuster of this bill.

I've also heard that another high profile party member, who wanted to be the party's leader and fought tooth and nail for the mantle, has some healing to do.  She could speed that along by standing with Obama in his filibuster.

If the two of them won't do this, I'm going to be left wondering just what it was we were all fighting so passionately about during the primary months.  If they'll both stand up for us now, and stand together, we'll know that all of those primary emotions were spent on behalf of the right people.

This is totally going to get lost since today is Obama's day but Robert
B. Reich has a great column in the Wall Street Journal about how to
make a cap and trade carbon system both fair to consumers and good for
the economy.

Reich's idea is to distribute profits from the cap and trade taxes directly to citizens.  It would kind of be like how Alaska lets its citizens share in oil revenues but it would have a good rather than bad effect on the environment and the economy.  In Reich's hypothetical, every adult American gets a $1,000 check a year.

Big industrial carbon users want to scare consumers out of supporting carbon taxes by saying that prices for manufactured products will go up.  But if the government pays the proceeds to every citizen, it won't matter if prices go up we'll be able to use the proceeds from the tax to cover any inflation caused by it.  Indeed, it's a transfer of corporate wealth to private citizens and that's a good thing.

It will also mean that once the carbon taxes are imposed, they'll be very hard to repeal.  Not even the best corporate lobbyists will be able to get congress to sign a law that puts an end to refund checks.

I like Reich's idea quite a lot.  I hope Barack Obama does too.

So John McCain has for once in the campaign done something clever.  If Obama goes to Iraq at McCain's behest, he looks like the follower rather than the leader.  If he doesn't, McCain and the Republicans can pound Obama for "not wanting to face the troops" or some such nonsense.  I have to hand it to McCain, it is good theater.  It even surprised me given that his only other effective strategy during the campaign so far was to just go ahead and let Giuliani not run against him.

But once again, it leaves us on the left having to defend the more nuanced point of view.

Presidents should go see our troops in war zones.  We can all agree on that.  The Commander in Chief, even under the tighest security and secrecy, should at least show up.  He has sent our people to war, after all.  Fine.  But Obama isn't president right now and he has already gone once anyway.

McCain will argue that a future President should go and see, and hear from the troops, in order to learn.  I say that's BS.  There's way more that can be learned about Iraq from here.  A two hour briefing from the Pentagon or CIA is going to be far more valuable than a flak-jacket walk through a secured Baghdad open market with ideologically vetted soldiers for company and we all know that.

And yes, these situations are fraught with political traps.  Remember 2004 -- there was a phony controversey that John Kerry, visiting the war zone, couldn't get the troops to sit near him in the mess hall.

Still, I do think it's valuable for a president, or future president, to talk to soldiers on the ground.  That can be easily accomplished though.  Stateside.  Just go visit a soldier who just got home on leave.  It's easy.

The president needs to articulate a broad strategy for the combat efforts.  In Obama's case, he'll need to articulate a broad way out of Bush's mess.  That's best orchestrated from here.  The people who need, and benefit from, "on the ground" experience are the people who make moment by moment, on the ground, strategic decisions.

Obama should agree to go to Iraq.  When he's president.  That's a president's responsibility.  In the meantime he needs to tell McCain that he's simply too busy analyzing all of the relevant information that's available here to indulge in what will amount to nothing more than a photo op.

Actually, this is not the truth about Jonathan Taplin.  Everything I'm going to write is factual, but it's not really the truth.  I'm just going to subject Taplin to the kind of innuendo that Taplin subjects his political opponents to in his posts.

This is Taplin, Taplinized:

Jonathan Taplin is a corrupt businessman who has absurdly claimed in court that his company, Intertainer, has a patent on the technologies that Apple, Google and Napster use to distribute digital media content on the Web.

Though Taplin started Intertainer in 1996, other companies like Real Networks were distributing digital content online way before Taplin filed for a patent in 2001.

In 2002, Intertainer flamed out and 80 people lost their jobs.  Taplin blamed the film industry and sued the five studios behind rival Movielink, claiming that they were colluding on prices to put him out of business.  The studios settled the lawsuit but a subsequent investigation by the Justice Department in 2004 found nothing amiss.  Did Taplin try to hide his failure with a nuisance lawsuit?

In 2005, the US government granted Taplin's company a broad patent for distributing digital content on line.  Two years later Taplin sued Apple, Google and Napster.  Amazing, earlier this year, Apple settled, but neither side will say for how much.  They probably just wanted Taplin to go away.  The only question that remains is whether or not Google and Napster will cave and pay Taplin some token "walk away" settlement.

So that's Jonathan Taplin, a failed businessman who bothers big companies with baseless lawsuits and who then profits when those companies settle.  Has he even thought to share his lawsuit winnings with the 80 people who lost their jobs because he mismanaged Intertainer?

***

Like I said, all of that is true.  I just put the least charitable spin on it that  I could.  I don't believe that Taplin is really corrupt or a failure or dishonest.  But he has proven himself willing to insinuate that the Clintons are corrupt, rather than just people who have run a misguided campaign so I figured I'd turn his own odd mirror on him.

The debate about Fareed Zarakia's book, "The Post-American World," has  resurrected one of the very worst ideas hatched by Anne Marie Slaughter -- a "concert of democracies" that will be empowered to act when the United Nations can't or won't.

Anne Marie Slaughter would like a job advising the next Democratic president.  Many of us have argued that Slaughter, who supports pre-emptive military action, supported the invasion of Iraq (but not the execution of it) and opposes withdrawing our forces from Iraq now, is actually too conservative a foreign policy thinker to serve in a Democratic administration.

Well, here's proof, including a blunder by John McCain, age 847 that Anne Marie Slaughter is to the right of the Democratic mainstream.  John McCain wants to have a "League of Nations," but what he meant was a "League of Democracies."  It's the Republicans, who have caused so many foreign policy disasters in 8 years, who are the first to take up Slaughter's cause.

Let's all keep that in mind as the debate around Fareed Zakaria's book continues.

Let’s imagine the worst and that McCain reaches the White House.  Because of his advanced age (847) he has only one term in which to implement the policies he’s promised.  But take four major issues (healthcare, social security, taxes and Iraq) and it’s clear that with an opposition congress, McCain will be able to keep only one of his promises.

On healthcare he proposes to eliminate employer based insurance and to give people a $5,000 tax credit so they can buy their own. George Bush already tried this when his party was in the majority of both the House and Senate and it still went nowhere.  If Bush in 8 years couldn’t do this with his own party in power for much of it, why believe that McCain can accomplish this in one term with opposition in the House and Senate?

On Social Security, McCain wants to “augment” the system with private accounts.  George Bush, with his party running both the House and Senate came very close to doing this but was stopped by Josh Marshall.  Okay, kidding aside, Bush came surprisingly close and vowed to try again, but he didn’t try again when he still had majorities and new better than to ever mention it again after 2006.  So again, this is something McCain is saying but that he won’t be able to do.

On taxes, he wants to extend the Bush cuts past 2010.  This is again something that Bush has tried and failed at getting done, over and over, both with a majority and without.   Maybe he thinks that when 2010 bears down and the provisions sunset, that the millionaires will all go on some sort of tax protest and the mood of the country will change dramatically.  But again, this isn’t something McCain can really deliver on and everyone should know it.

On Iraq, he wants to keep our troops there for either 100 or a million years.  Sadly, this is something that the president can do, even in the face of congressional opposition.

I’m not trying to make light of a McCain presidency, which will have terrible ramifications for our security, our civil liberties and for the Supreme Court.  But an honest media needs to start point out that McCain is ripping off a lot of his ideas from an unpopular president who has already failed at getting a lot of those ideas turned into law.  McCain is running on a rejected platform.

Critics of Moveon very often point out that the group opposed invading Afghanistan after 9/11.  Then we all argue about what Moveon did or didn't say at the time and the argument is rarely productive because it rests on a false premise: that we were absolutely right to invade Afghanistan and that any other point of view is bogus.

I'm not a Moveon member (they send too many emails) and I did support attacking Afghanistan.  But, we need to stop thinking about it as some sort of good war that all reasonable people did and do support.

Here are some valid reasons that somebody might have opposed invading Afghanistan:

Afghanistan didn't attack us, Al-Qaeda did.  Sure, the Taliban supported Al-Qaeda but we supported the Taliban up until September 10th so we lacked any sort of moral high ground.

9/11 was basically a criminal act, not a military act, so our response should have been closer to an international law enforcement effort.

That the chaos of war might have created cover that would allow Osama bin Laden and his top lieutenants to escape justice.

We risked killing innocent people in Afghanistan by invading.

We did not have the ability to replace the Taliban with an effective government.

We risked sending our troops into a quagmire that would lead to a multi-year engagement.

That our occupation in Afghanistan risked propping up Musharaf's dictatorship in Pakistan and could potentially harm our relations with India while hurting our efforts to stop states from developing nuclear weapons.

In the end, I believed that once the Taliban refused to hand over Osama bin Laden that it had to go.  But I don't think that people who might have opposed invading Afghanistan (or who still oppose it, or the way the war was conducted) are particularly radical or wrong-headed.

[Apologies if this posts twice. I posted 15 minutes ago and it didn't show up.]

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.

Yes, Hillary made me examine Obama because of what she's done during her campaign.
But I'm supporting him while still wishing the best for her and for all of us.

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.

I've posted my doubts about Hillary already and was asked by Genghis to go ahead and endorse Obama.  I just ignored that.  Wasn't ready yet.

Okay, I endorse Obama.  But I will continue to question him through the general and to ask things of him, so long as I don't do anything to harm his race against John Sidney McCain, age 847.

I supported Hillary as an experienced political combatant. I've already posted about this so I'll just give the short version here:  I thought she meant that she saw her husband get impeached over nothing and that she'd fight the "vast right wing conspiracy," which is a phrase she coined.  Instead, she seemed to mean that she dodged sniper fire in Bosnia with Sinbad while opposing the invasion of Iraq way in the future but early enough that she "criticized" (note that she didn't say "opposed") it before Obama did.

Like Sting after he left The Police and started singing about Desert Roses, Hillary is somebody who once inspired me and who once spoke to me, but who doesn't make sense to me any more.  And seriously, go Youtube or Limewire some Police songs and then compare them to contemporary Sting songs and you will know what I mean.

At this point... I'm insulted.  I'm no moron.  I knew damned well that Hillary voted to authorize the use of force against Iraq.  I didn't agree with her at the time but I saw her reasoning and I supported her, and voted for her second term as my senator, in spite of it.  I assumed that we could call it a reasonable disagreement among reasonable people and leave it at that.

But... now she's claiming she opposed the Iraq war before Obama did?  What?

The whole argument is a tad insulting to me.  Here I've spent months defending her original vote on principle... I've been saying, over and over, that you have to remember how easy the first Gulf War was and how people like Al Gore, who opposed it because they feared a quagmire, had to explain themselves later, and how they were politically hobbled by their opposition... that explanation totally makes sense.  If Hillary would just say the truth: "I was worried it would be easy and a bunch of nukes would be found," then I think her worst detractors could at least have a civil debate with her.

But, no.


This has become a farce.  It's really sad because Hillary Clinton, as the first First Lady to become a US Senator, is a historic figure and should be on a coin some day, but she's ruining it now by not making sense.

I support Obama now.  I'm done with Hillary.  But I do want you all to know that if Hillary had done what I thought she would, if she had leveled with us about political realities and about what she was really thinking in 2002/2003 and if she had done it without embarrassment, then I'd be fighting tooth and nail for her.

But now she's being wormy.  It's beneath her.  It embarrasses me.  I've come to respect Obama quite a lot lately.  But mostly because he hasn't bludgeoned Hillary over her recent behavior which I believe is out of character for both her and Bill.  Heck, maybe Obama agrees with me that Hillary and Bill are out of character right now... maybe that's why he's been giving her a pass.

I never thought Hillary would succumb to this.

Genghis... I give in.  Obama or bust.

Let me just try this idea out: we should talk about race, but we should always include a conversation about broader civil rights issues.

Yes, as the polite phrasing goes, African Americans have a “unique” history in this country.  That must be dealt with.  So do Native Americans.  That must be dealt with.  The concurrent sins of slavery and genocide are part of this country’s history that can’t be ignored.

But practically speaking, the issues are not all black and white as Ta-Nehisi Coates ably argues.  Not when we get down to the brass tacks of civil rights and really discuss what we’re unfairly denying people and what we need to do.  If we’re really going to discuss people’s rights to be free from harassment by the police, their rights to pursue their own happiness and to work for it, their rights to associate freely with others, to follow their own spiritual impulses and to marry whoever it is that they love, then we are way beyond black and white.

To me, all issues of race, creed and lifestyle are related and once we see that, things become more complicated but a lot of opportunities present themselves.

Glenn Loury said yesterday that, “I can’t get past the fact that Obama was negotiating with the American public on behalf of MY people in Philadelphia last week.”

But Obama didn’t presume to speak for the entire African American community, and I don’t think he ever would.  He was forced into a situation where people might interpret his words that way because it was the media’s obsession with Wright that turned the conversation into a black and white one.

It’s the media that’s generalizing here.  What does Hillary mean to women?  What does Obama mean to African Americans?  These are fine questions but they’re really not the important questions since these people want to be president of the entire country.

If I were Obama I’d be putting my fist through a wall every time I heard that I’m speaking for all African Americans.  It would drive me nuts.  I don’t know the answer to this rhetorical question but did Ralph Ellison consider himself a black novelist or a novelist?  I’ll never know but I bet he wished he had the liberty to think of himself as either one, when it suited him.

So Obama is forced to deal with Wright’s sermon.  It’s politics, it happens.  He deals with it well.  He treats the country, as John Stewart remarked, like adults, and he really won my respect when he did that.
But let’s get back to the core civil rights issues of the day.  Let’s get down to stopping police brutality against minority citizens, let’s get down to the issues of unfair prison sentencing and a broken death penalty system.  Let’s pardon everyone who is in jail for life because of minor law violations that added up to “three strikes and you’re out.”  Let’s tackle workplace discrimination against minorities, women and homosexuals.  Let’s let homosexuals serve openly in the military and have their marriages treated as valid by the IRS and the rest of the government.  Let’s find a way to make immigrants from Mexico, Asia and the rest of the world who have worked here for years as part of a shadow economy into actual citizens with the rights that they deserve.  Hell, let’s stop the government from snooping into people’s private conversations and correspondence without cause or warrant.

Get down to the issues of civil rights and it is no longer black and white.  This is where we find out common ground.  This is where Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton don’t have to represent their races and genders but can represent all of us as Americans who expect a fair shot at achieving our dreams and a government that treats us with dignity.

President Bush (remember him?) says that the fighting in Basra is "A defining moment in the history of a free Iraq."

It is a history that will be remembered for 100 years if John McCain, age 847, is elected president in November.

Of course, all nations have a defining moment and it's often a bloody one.  Bush is right, this is a defining moment.

And Iraq will be defined as, um, Star Wars.  Ish. well it's not but if I cram all the history together into a jumble and you read it really fast, you will see that Bush is right:

Nouri Maliki was just a talented politician until he forged an alliance with the charismatic Shia Moqtada al Sadr.  Sadr thrust Maliki into power but then Maliki turned on Sadr.  The two reached an uneasy truce which lasted until a few days ago.  Now Maliki is personally leading Iraqi security forces and some ragtag militias against Sadr and his Sadrists (who need a better name) and George Bush thinks this is some sort of victory for the Iraqi government that we installed when really Maliki isn't doing so well and Sadr has responded to Maliki's calls that he lay down his arms and get out of Basra by saying "No, you lay down your arms and get out of Basra!"

Don't forget that Maliki and Sadr used to like each other.

Remember when we used to argue about whether or not Iraq had fallen into civil war?  Well now we have to redefine that.  A civil war usually has a few distinct players.  This is an all out grab for power as Iraq's government fails again.

A defining moment, indeed.

For the next 100 years.  Remember that.  John McCain isn't troubled by any of this.

This isn't a post I wanted to write.  It's frankly a little embarassing given some of the things I've written on this site.

After Obama's race speech I decided that I'd stop calling Obama a wimp.  I decided to only make affirmative statements about Hillary's toughness.

Now I'm having trouble with that one, too.  She isn't exhibiting the kind of toughness that I wanted and expected. I thought that she would savage John McCain, age 847, in both the primaries and in the general.  I gave her the benefit of the doubt when she went after Obama instead, reasoning that she had to deal with the upstart first. But her attacks on Obama haven't been that impressive.  If she had aggressively steered the campaign towards her strength (her superior understanding of policy) I'd have been very impressed. Instead, well, I don't know what she's doing.  But it's not "tough."

Then she sits down with Richard Mellon Scaife.  Why?  If somebody had spent millions of dollars on private investigators in an attempt to ruin me, and in the process unleashed David Brock's stilted prose on the world, you would not be able to get me in a room with that person.  Because there would be a restraining order.  Richard Mellon Scaife is exactly the sort of guy that I thought Hillary would be able to shut down.

I've supported Hillary Clinton because I know how nasty the Republicans will be to our next president and because I assumed that like Bill, she'd be able to fight back against it.  I actually assumed she'd do better than Bill because she's politically battle hardened and because the current crop of Republicans have nothing on Newt Gingrich.

This should have been obvious to the Clinton campaign.  Everyone top to bottom should have understood that her supporters expected political smarts and toughness.  When she said she was "experienced" she should have been talking about her political experience -- more about what she's seen and been through than what she's done. Instead she exagerates her Bosnia landing as if I ever cared whether or not she's taken sniper fire.

I can blame Mark Penn for this, but if she didn't stand up to him then she's not who I thought she was, or wanted her to be.