My little politics blog

But I'd never felt the large emotions she seemed to stir in others. New York's junior senator wants to be president? Fine, I thought. Let's hear her pitch. Because she was still a relative newcomer to government service, I assumed that, more than most presidential candidates, Clinton would recognize the need to give voters a reason to vote for her. I waited expectantly to discover what that reason might be.

I never dreamed the reason would be "experience." More astonishing still, the public seems to be buying it. According to a new New York Times/CBS News poll, 79 percent of all Democratic primary voters believe that Hillary Clinton has "prepared herself well enough for the job of President," compared with only 40 percent for Obama. "Experience Counts" declared the headline of a Jan. 9 editorial in the Boston Globe about the New Hampshire victories of Hillary Clinton and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. "The results suggest that, at the least, New Hampshire voters put more stock in the length of a candidate's track record than Iowa voters did," the Globe said. But the paper never got around to explaining what, in Hillary's case, that experience consisted of.

Let's be clear. If you're a Democrat, experience isn't on this year's menu.

Clinton's claim to superior experience isn't merely dishonest. It's also potentially dangerous should she become the nominee. If Clinton continues to build her campaign on the dubious foundation of government experience, it shouldn't be very difficult for her GOP opponent to pull that edifice down. That's especially true if a certain white-haired senator now serving his 25th year in Congress (four in the House and 21 in the Senate) wins the nomination. McCain could easily make Hillary look like an absolute fraud who is no more truthful about her depth of government experience than she is about why her mother named her "Hillary." Dennis Kucinich has more government experience than Clinton. (He also has a better health-care plan, but we'll save that for another day.) If Clinton doesn't find a new theme soon, she won't just be cutting Obama's throat. She'll also be cutting her own.

What I know for sure is that when I think of all of the possible Democratic nominees, my reaction ranges from "could be OK" to "OH LORD PLEASE NO!!!", with one exception. Obama is the only one who makes me think, "Oh man, that would be SO great!!"

I take it it goes without saying that all of this is unfair. While I think that a number of criticisms of the Clintons, and perhaps a few attacks as well, might have been warranted, I don't think it was the least bit fair that they were subjected to either the amount or the kind of vilification that they received. And everything I've said above is true precisely because Hillary Clinton was vilified. It's because of that fact that many people are inclined to believe the worst of her reflexively. And it's also because of that fact that Democrats are inclined to react to attacks on her defensively and angrily.

But fairness isn't the point when it comes to nominating a candidate for the Presidency. No one is entitled to be the Democratic nominee, and all sorts of people have lost their chance to be nominated unfairly. It's unfair that Chris Dodd and Bill Richardson had to go up against one of the strongest Democratic fields in living memory. It's unfair that Paul Tsongas looked like a dweeb. It's unfair that Richard Nixon's five o'clock shadow played any role at all in the 1960 election, hard as I find it to regret its effects. I could go on and on, and that's without getting into all the people who didn't even bother to run, or for that matter to enter politics, for unfair reasons.

If we want to, we could take this opportunity to redress the injustices done to Hillary Clinton. Personally, I'd rather win, and win in a way that makes it harder for those kinds of injustices to be perpetrated on anyone in the future.

I've said several times that I'd vote for any of the top three Democrats. I really, really hope I get to vote for Obama. If he's the nominee, I'll work hard to do what I can to help him get elected. If Edwards is the nominee, I'll work for him too. If Hillary's the nominee, I'll probably just vote for her and leave it at that.

Nobody is perfect. In a less impressive field, I'd probably just kind of accept that Hillary is imperfect but the best shot. Obama isn't perfect either -- but I think he's a much better choice.

A New Hampshire Clinton campaign official, Bill Shaheen, resigned last month after suggesting Democrats should be wary of nominating Obama because of his past drug use.

In what seems to have been another misjudged remark, Obama's wife, Michelle, campaigning for him in South Carolina, also brought up race. Addressing African-Americans sceptical about his ability to win, she said Iowa, which is predominantly white, voted for Obama. "Ain't no black people in Iowa," she said.

The language could alienate some white voters and the comment is also wrong: there are 75,000 African-Americans in Iowa.

Which brings me to the point: History may be in the hands of Jim Clyburn. The powerful and respected South Carolina congressman wisely resisted urgings to sign on with the "inevitable" Clinton candidacy, leaving him now in a position to put Obama over the top if he wants to.

And surely he wants to. While it was once avowed racists who publicly smeared black candidates, now it is the Clintons and their surrogates.

[...]

Clyburn voiced strong objections to the Clinton tactics in an interview with The New York Times, using words like "denigrate" and "disrespect." He went on to say he was reconsidering his neutrality in the race.

An endorsement of Obama by Clyburn would be "game over" in South Carolina and likely a pivotal moment in the 2008 campaign.

History is calling, Congressman Clyburn. Will you answer?

Writing in his regular column for the Washington Post today, Richard Cohen sought to frighten me and every other Jew in America into believing that Barack Obama at worst supports, and at best tacitly approves of, the vile ideology and racialist libels that Louis Farrakhan has variously promulgated over the course of a long and serpentine career.

Having received a number of anxious emails from fellow Jews across the country, quoting from or including the entire text of the column, I can reassure Mr. Cohen that his efforts have not gone in vain. No one could argue, however, that Mr. Cohen set himself a difficult task. As a Jew, I know how easy it is to fear an anti-Semite, in particular a rabid one who, like Farrakhan, claims to have the ear of millions.

Indeed, it is as easy to fear hatred as it is to feel it; that is precisely why I refuse to be afraid. An extremist cannot flourish without the good offices of alarmists and those whom they incite to fear.

Rabbi David Saperstein, Director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, today joined an array of Jewish community leaders in speaking out against "hateful emails that use falsehood and innuendo to mischaracterize Senator Barack Obama's religious beliefs and who he is as a person."

An "open letter" in response: