What makes the accusations coming from Clinton supporters even harder to deal with is that I’ve consistently ignored the sort of stupid mini-controversies that come up during what passes for political process in this country. I haven’t written about most of them because, quite frankly, they’re stupid.

A great example today: Hillary Clinton’s RFK comments.

Look, I want her to leave the race for the good of the party and for her own legacy at this point, but this controversy is silly. I listened to the comments and the most “normal person” interpretation is that she was talking about candidates fighting for primaries in June, implying that there were several candidates still in. RFK was assassinated after the California primary in June. The second half of that sentence is what she was talking about, and the RFK assassination bit was just her mental touchstone about why she remembers it. That’s my interpretation.

I didn’t hear some “What if Obama was assassinated” remark, and I think all of this criticism is unwarranted. The Olbermann Special Comment was particularly unfair. Taking the least favorable interpretation and running with it usually is.

So, normally I wouldn’t even mention it, but I feel the need to defend Clinton after trashing her campaign a few posts below, especially since I’m certainly going to be accused of being “unfair” to her campaign.

I said I wouldn’t write more about the primary, but clearly I’ve been violating the spirit of that rule. Might as well be up front about this.

What Hillary Clinton is now doing is wrong. Her candidacy is not a vehicle for equality or civil rights and Florida and Michigan are not Zimbabwe. I am not a sexist, at least not because I want Hillary Clinton to give up.

To those that complain about the rampant sexism in the coverage, don’t even get me started on the rampant racism. Your candidate ran on the “White like you” platform in Appalachia and didn’t have the good character to at least openly acknowledge that race was a factor. I watched the news organizations contort themselves into pretzels to avoid acknowledging that race was THE factor in Appalachia. “Hard-working” and “blue collar” became the words of the day.

It seems like we’re forgetting that both candidates are from disenfranchised groups, so this sort of pissing match about who’s been trodden upon more is ridiculous and divisive.

Folks don’t want to talk about it, but Clinton had high negatives from before the primary, before Obama grew into a phenomenon, and back when I was still supporting the white guy from my state. She had high negatives because of crap that Republicans threw at her in the 90s, not from Obama supporters like me today. This isn’t about sexism or racism but about a candidate who lost a primary. The -isms were factors, certainly, but they cut against both candidates. Or maybe the die-hard Clinton supporters missed this:

Nah, it’s only about sexism. I mean, racism is dead, right?

Yup, it’s only about the sexism.

Seriously, how do these die-hard Clinton supporters respect themselves saying these things?

So, let me be clear: I didn’t want Clinton as the nominee before the primary season even got underway. I have always seen her votes in the Senate as positioning for an eventual Presidential run and that became tiring. Never once has she tried to use her name or her influence to move the needle of public opinion, she only took what the polls said and let that guide her vote. The latter may lead to pragmatic and competent policy but it’s not leadership. It also has nothing to do with her gender.

The Calvinball tactics are depressing and this attempt to wrap her candidacy in the honor of truly significant generational struggles is both stupid and offensive.

I’ve lost nearly all the respect I’ve had for Hillary Clinton during the final months of this primary. She is, quite frankly, only interested in herself and her ambition. She and John McCain: They’ll do anything, contort any reality, and flip flop on any issue in order to win the Presidency.

Finally, I have sympathy for the women who are truly saddened by Hillary Clinton’s loss in this campaign. The sexism has been visible and open from major media figures (Chris Matthews, I’m looking at you). I’m not a woman, but I am a minority and I understand what can get invested when you see “one of your own” reaching for a peak that no one has reached before. I also recognize how unfair it seems when bias and prejudice seem to hobble your candidate. I really do get it. It still doesn’t excuse what she’s doing.

OK, rant done. Sorry. I leave you with this bit of campaign fluff:

Still makes me laugh every time. And seriously, how long did that take to make???

Update: I edited slightly to remove some ambiguous second person writing on advice of my English teacher. I had a certain other set of bloggers in mind when I was writing this, people who I’ve respected and whose policy judgment I truly trusted. So, the “you” was meant to be them, folks like BTD and Jeralyn at TalkLeft, the fine folks (mostly commenters) over at Shakesville, and some other pro-Clinton blogs. I’m tired of being insulted when I’m trying to just get their perspective.

So, Clinton is apparently $20 million in debt. She’s worth quite a bit, so I don’t think this is a huge problem for her, but over at Balloon Juice, someone raised an interesting point. She’s continuing to raise money for a bid that can’t win at this point without the stars aligning. Where is that money coming from, and how does it impact the rest of the Democratic fundraising efforts this cycle? I guess it comes down to how many of her donors would’ve instead donated that amount to a different election (local, Congressional, or Senate), or to the eventual nominee.

It seems like another con for her staying in the race longer.

Via The Big Picture, we find this funny cartoon:

Then ask yourself whether I’d happily vote for someone who states, boldy, that she won’t side with economists (on an issue about the economy!!!@#$@#$) because they are “elitist.” To quote the great Inigo Montoya, “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” sigh.

Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock, you know that Hillary Clinton won in PA yesterday. I’ll repeat what I said earlier, that I don’t see how this ends before the convention. At this point, I beginning to doubt that this ends well for the Democrats in November.

While I think the country is ready for a Democratic administration, and still leans that way, this nomination fight has bloodied both candidates. With Obama now going negative as well, this race will hurt the eventual nominee regardless of who is the winner. At the very least, it has taken Obama off message, and taken the wind out of a lot of supporters. Those of my friends and co-workers that are Obama supporters have lost a lot of the excitement of the early days. For me, at least, the biggest reason has been the wearying nature of this nomination fight. Each non-decisive primary has marked the start of an even more negative campaign. Nothing takes enthusiasm out of supporters than constant bombardment of the candidate, especially from admired figures within the same party.

I also find it frustrating because the system is clearly just completely messed up here. If we went with a winner take all system like the Republicans, Clinton would have the nomination sewed up already. If we went with a simple majority vote/delegate count, Obama would have this locked up. Instead, we have super delegates and proportional apportionment, the worst of both worlds when the party fields two strong candidates.

Finally, after the last few weeks, I’m pretty angry with the Clinton campaign. I know some of you think this is unfair, but this is how I feel. I’m tired of them, and I’m tired of Mark Penn, of Howard Wolfson, and of the nasty, dishonest, Rovian campaigning they’ve been running. I will vote for her if she somehow convinces enough super delegates to support her and wins the nomination, but I won’t enjoy it. She and her campaign have taken all the enjoyment out of what should’ve been a good election year.

I realize it’s silly to worry about “enjoying” the campaign, but it has real effects for me. I certainly won’t volunteer, and I’m unlikely to give her money. Donating to political campaigns annoys my wife (we have different opinions on the role of money in politics), and I’m not willing to annoy her for Hillary Clinton. Perhaps I’ll regret saying this later, but right now, I’m just tired of the whole damn thing, and I can’t imagine what this will feel like in June when the last primary results come through and it’s STILL not resolved.

I also suspect, after reading TalkLeft, that there are Clinton supporters who feel the same way about Obama. And that’s why I think we’re all f’d come November. Four more years of Bush-lite will drive us from crisis to crisis. That should be fun.

(and a clarification on the headline… no more full length posts. I may pass on articles, but I think I’m going to reduce that even further. I really just don’t care anymore.)

As Josh Marshall said, this is “the old Bill I used to know and love.” And he’s right… you can vote for Hillary, who released a tastefully done commercial with Osama bin Laden and various scary images asking “Who do you think has what it takes?” or you can vote for the guy who has made an effort to keep his campaign above that.

TPM has a video running down the Sunday shows this weekend and I was surprised and a bit appalled to see Ed Rendell saying that at least the Clinton camp wasn’t hypocritical by being negative. As if he’s proud of slinging nasty, negative attacks because, well, they didn’t swear it off.

This race can’t end soon enough for me. Make it stop, PA. Vote Obama.

So, am I the only one who is FLOORED that The Colbert Report just had on both Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama (via satellite), and John Edwards? It was all silly fun with only the slightest bit of seriousness from John Edwards. His appearance was the most interesting to me, since he came out and said, for the first time on camera, I think, what he’s would like from the candidates in order to secure his endorsement.

Jet skis, in case you were wondering.

(and something about making poverty a key part of their campaign, pledging a minimum wage increase, and some issue called “healthcare” or something).

In all seriousness, I don’t think any other show could’ve set up a triple appearance like that. It’s amazing to me how “serious” the Colbert Report and The Daily Show have become.

Quickly, because I’m in the middle of some stuff here, is James Fallows’s take on yesterday’s news:

That the Clinton family would dignify the American Spectator, of all publications, is astonishing to anyone who was alive in the 1990s.

That they would bless this attempt to paint Merrill McPeak as an anti-Semite is grotesque.

If this wasn’t clear in my ramble last night, that’s what this is about. The American Spectator and Scaife haven’t had some epiphany and suddenly decided to behave like normal, if opinionated, magazines. They have simply decided to back a different side.

This isn’t an improvement for those of us not in the Clinton campaign. In fact, it’s encouraging the same crappy behavior they exhibited during the Clinton years. It’s wrong, period.

I’ve been sitting back basically wishing Hillary Clinton would drop out of the race but believing that she had every right and reason to stay in the race purely on principle (if she’s able to raise money, clearly people think she can win, ergo she should stay in).

As I’ve watched the race get dirtier and stupider, what with Clinton demonstrating that Sinbad has a better memory than she does, and her tactic of boosting McCain in order to put down Obama, that wish has gotten stronger, but I’ve refrained from joining the call for her to drop out.

That changes today. Today, she showed exactly how far she’s willing to go to win this nomination. It’s not going to seem like much to people who aren’t political junkies, but it’s significant. Today, she sat down with the editorial staff of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, which is owned by Richard Mellon Scaife. Here’s TPM on the significance:

This afternoon Greg Sargent and I were talking this over and one of us realized that this wasn’t just any Pittsburgh paper. It was the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, the money-losing, vanity, fringe sheet of Richard Mellon Scaife, funder of the Arkansas Project, the American Spectator during its prime Clinton-hunting years and virtually every right-wing operation of note at one point or another over the last twenty years or more.

…

This alone has to amount to some sort cosmic encounter like something out of a Wagner opera. Remember, this is the guy who spent millions of dollars puffing up wingnut fantasies about Hillary’s having Vince Foster whacked and lots of other curdled and ugly nonsense. Scaife was the nerve center of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy. Those of us who spent years defending the Clintons from all that malarkey learned this point on day one.

Even the fracking National Review post about this was entitled “Hell Has Officially Frozen Over.”

This man was behind or involved in most of the nastiest smears against the Clintons during Bill Clinton’s time as President. Not only would I expect there to be some animosity, I would expect her to blacklist the outlet. Seriously. This isn’t just some political opponent but a man who literally made up accusations and put our nation through some of the most ridiculous political moments, funded by taxpayer dollars, just to advance his party.

As usual, Atrios has it right:

Remember back in junior high, when you had that friend that the bullies picked on all the time? And you defended that friend, who really never did all that much for you, which led to you getting your ass kicked a few times yourself? And then you got to high school and your friend joined up with the bullies? It’s kind of like that.

This is nuts. This is beyond nuts, it’s insulting to everyone who has ever defended the Clintons against the Whitewater attacks, who supported them, and eventually Gore against these attacks.

It’s insulting to everyone that wants to see Washington stop being filled by win-at-all-cost partisanship. That, more than anything, has characterized the paralysis in Congress, particularly the Republican side, as beating Democrats has been more important than good policy.

This clearly seems to be part of the Clinton campaign strategy as they’re now now passing on fake stories from the American Spectator claiming Obama has a problem with Jews. Bill Clinton today accused the Obama campaign of disenfranchising voters, which he knows is a lie. And on, and on. These aren’t just negative attacks, they’re false negative attacks.

I am done defending her or giving her the benefit of the doubt. By allying herself with Scaife and American Spectator, she’s joined Limbaugh and company in the irredeemable category. If she wins, I won’t give her money, nor will I fund raise for her. $0.

She needs to drop out. She’s crossed the rubicon.

PS. I am not alone in this.

PPS: Yes, I would vote for her in November (she’s still better than McCain), but it will no longer be enjoyable.

While I’m not as fond of Hillary Clinton’s campaign as I am Barack Obama’s, I’m certainly going to vote for the Democratic nominee. If it turns into an exercise of holding my nose because they can’t keep Mark Penn quiet, then I’ll do that and vote for Clinton.

Josh Marshall over at TPM has been highlighting some emails he’s been receiving from supporters of both Obama and Clinton who have sworn off voting for the other candidate in the general. He has a a thoughtful post up reflecting on these kind of emails and the polarization they imply. In particular, I want to highlight this:

That’s not to say that these small differences are reasons to choose one of the candidates over the other. But to threaten either to sit the election or vote for McCain or vote for Nader if your candidate doesn’t win the nomination shows as clearly as anything that one’s ego-investment in one’s candidate far outstrips one’s interest in public policy and governance. If this really is one’s position after calm second-thought, I see no other way to describe it.

Perspective, folks. A McCain presidency, where we continue to spend far above our means for a war that doesn’t serve our strategic interests is the surest way to accelerate and guarantee the end of America’s hegemony in the world.

I’ve said it before, but perhaps not clearly: George W. Bush’s presidency is responsible for the largest decline in American soft (economic) power in a century, at least. We are going to face a decline in our economic power because we can’t spend within our (rather significant) means. The national debt has nearly doubled during the eight years of the Bush presidency, and will possibly cross $10 trillion by the end of his term.

All of this was preventable. All of this would’ve helped mitigate the end of the housing bubble (though that would’ve been severe anyway), and help us deal with more threats around the world, but instead we’ve spent like mad and run up a huge deficit every year. Then, the government has done its best to hide the deficit in off-budget supplemental spending. The reserve then stopped reporting on the M3 money supply measure (removing, from what I understand, one of the concrete accountings of how much we’re issuing in debt).

The next president is going to have a lot on their hands to prevent further erosion of American soft power. Faced with a choice between a Democrat and a Republican, or specifically Clinton/Obama vs. McCain, the choice is clear. 2008 the right vote is voting D.

I fear I’m turning off most of you by beating on this, but it’s important to examine all of this because it’s important for this primary election and because the Republicans will bring this up in November. Along with her supposed role in the Northern Ireland peace process, Sen. Clinton also claimed to have advocated for intervention in Rwanda to her husband. Bill Clinton corroborates the story, and I’m willing to accept that it’s true. This isn’t the point she’s making, though, in her speeches. This isn’t the same thing as having responsibility to solve these crises or a portfolio responsibility for the area. To reiterate, none of the experience as First Lady being “in the room” counts more than her Senate experience except for those areas where she used her staff and office to accomplish an agenda. The health care effort in the early 90s counts, for example. Chatting with her husband doesn’t.

Hilzoy makes a good point, by the way, about whether she should even bring up her advocacy in the Rwanda policy of the Clinton administration. Not only did he not listen to her, the administration did precisely the opposite thing:

I have no idea whether or not this is true. But I do know a couple of related things. First, if Hillary Clinton did press for military intervention in Rwanda, her advocacy left no trace in the world. I have read quite a lot about the Rwandan genocide and the US reaction towards it, and Hillary Clinton’s involvement comes as news to me. I just went through my various books on the Rwandan genocide (there are eight), and she is not mentioned in any of them. And according to the Chicago Tribune, I’m not alone:

“Whatever her private conversations with the president may have been, key foreign policy officials say that a U.S. military intervention in Rwanda was never considered in the Clinton administration’s policy deliberations. Despite lengthy memoirs by both Clintons and former Secretary of State and UN Ambassador Madeleine Albright, any advice she gave on Rwanda had not been mentioned until her presidential campaign.

…

In an article on the US response to the Rwandan genocide (and written in 2001, years before she met Barack Obama), Samantha Power wrote:

“What is most remarkable about the American response to the Rwandan genocide is not so much the absence of U.S. military action as that during the entire genocide the possibility of U.S. military intervention was never even debated. Indeed, the United States resisted intervention of any kind.”

…

But it’s worse than that. The Clinton administration did not simply fail to intervene militarily in Rwanda. It took a number of steps that made it easier for genocide to be committed. Not taking these steps would have been much, much easier than sending actual troops to Rwanda. They would have made a real difference. And yet the Clinton administration failed to take them.

I’ll turn this over to Samantha Power:

…

This implied that the United States had done a good deal but not quite enough. In reality the United States did much more than fail to send troops. It led a successful effort to remove most of the UN peacekeepers who were already in Rwanda. It aggressively worked to block the subsequent authorization of UN reinforcements. It refused to use its technology to jam radio broadcasts that were a crucial instrument in the coordination and perpetuation of the genocide. And even as, on average, 8,000 Rwandans were being butchered each day, U.S. officials shunned the term “genocide,” for fear of being obliged to act. The United States in fact did virtually nothing “to try to limit what occurred.” Indeed, staying out of Rwanda was an explicit U.S. policy objective.”

It also reminds me of the maddening thing about the Bill Clinton years. He was an able and often clever steward of the nation but hardly a bold leader who took chances to push the country toward what he thought was right. In fact, he often folded when faced with a hand he didn’t like or that challenged key constituencies.

He was a good President and I’m sure Sen. Clinton would make a solid President. I’m more sure that Sen. Obama would be a good President and, on top of that, could advocate issues by going to the people on important issues. This is a talent that Sen. Clinton just doesn’t have, and a temperament that she doesn’t have. That’s precisely what makes him a better candidate.

There’s this myth that the press has been “hard” on Hillary Clinton. While I do agree that they’ve been easier on Obama, it doesn’t mean they’ve been hard on Clinton. These things aren’t mutually exclusive. You can let one candidate go off light (e.g. the McCain/Hagee story) without being too harsh on another candidate. So, I think Josh Marshall has a good point in the linked article:

I guess these things run in cycles. But let’s get real and admit that Hillary Clinton is getting the free ride of all free rides on her repeated invocations of foreign policy experience. As part of her foreign policy experience Clinton claims “I helped to bring peace to Northern Ireland.”

[quotes from Clinton and stuff about how these claims are silly, read the article] …

These are the sorts of puffed up claims that get other candidates held up to mockery and derision. But Clinton is using them as cudgels in her effort to portray Obama as a lightweight with no experience dealing with foreign policy crises. And basically she’s getting a pass. I guess it speaks to the advantages of staying on offense, which can never be gainsaid. But she’s still getting a big pass on this and a lot else.

Al Gore said something truthful but less than clear and the GOP turned it into “He says he invented the Internet” and Leno and the news repeated it for years. Hell, they still do, even though the source was a GOP press release. Sen. Clinton claims to have been involved in key diplomatic work in Ireland, Kosovo, and Bosnia but no one is making fun of her about this. These statements are boldly untrue. Where is the press on this stuff? And, more importantly, what in the world is the Clinton campaign thinking? Are they nuts?

Quick, explain the Whitewater Scandal and what the Clintons were supposed to have done wrong. Bet you can’t.

One of the reasons I’m quite upset at the tack the Clinton camp and the press is taking is that they’re spreading baseless smears without any actual evidence or even the appearance of anything wrong. Take the Rezko indictments in Chicago. The name Rezko is mentioned as a potential liability for Obama but with no actual claim of wrongdoing. Anyway, don’t have time to write anything long here, but Glenn Greenwald has a good rundown of the dynamic going on here:

One very simple and self-evidently warranted rule ought to be applied: no reporter should toss around “Rezko” innuendo unless they’re able to explain what it means specifically when assessing Obama’s conduct, what specific allegations of any substance are being made against Obama when the scary specter of “Rezko” is invoked. If they’re incapable of articulating even those basics — and they are — then the whole exercise is just deceitful and worthless.

When the Clintons were facing this sort of attack over Whitewater, it cost the nation $70+ million to investigate with only a perjury accusation over a blowjob to show for it. $70 million. The Clintons should know better than to fan this sort of attack, and it’s disappointing that they keep repeating it.

The other big scandal this weekend that hurt Obama was the Canadian NAFTA conversation. It’s starting to look like the story began with an overture by the Clinton campaign. Somehow it became a story about Obama and AP found the memo. Funny how that happened, huh. (Smear by innuendo, look, it’s EASY!)