Hillary has metaphorically SOLD HER SOUL. Expect the worst in a FIGHT TO THE FINISH

[Sensitivity]

Seriously folks. As wonderfull a person as Hillary Clinton is deep down, to sign off on the array of deceptive and destructive lines of attack and back-channel smears, she must have signed herself unto deep spiritual abandonment and accepted that there is no turning back.

Obama supporters must face political facts:

1. Negative smears almost always work by creating doubt even if they are totally false (jane voter does not have the time to determine the truth).

2. Negative smears attract MSM attention and will get much more coverage than any positive response.

3. There are ethnic prejudices and xenophobia tendencies, part of the fundamental American psyche, that can easily be stired against a black man, born of a foreign father with a name like Barack Hussein Obama. Hillary Clinton is not subject to these prejudices.

4. Historically a smear campaign against has only been successfully countered by a smear campaign against the other (with negatives going up for all and the vote depressed for all).

4. The only other counter possible is slow grass-roots mobilization that brings educated and committed supporters into the electorate.

If Obama is to win the nomination it may have to be through a long hard march through to the end.

[Dogmudgeon]

1. Back-channel smears?

Like pro-Obama Internetters saying that she sold her soul?

--p!

[Sensitivity]

3. Have you listened to Hillary recently??

[bellasgrams]

6. Dear Sens, I have listened to Hillary and it sounds like she

has decided to dish it back at BO and it's about time. He has whined and called everything racist that is said against him and the average person is sick of it. If he should win, I pity this country.

[Sensitivity]

7. Oh. You mean Kerry, Kennedy, Rockefeller have wrongly observed DISTORTION AND DECEPTION

in the Clinton campaign tactics against Obama since his win in Iowa.

[bellasgrams]

17. Of course they're going along with BO, they want to anoint him.

I never did think much of Kerry or Rocky and I'm very disappointed in Kennedy, however he's getting old, isn't he pushing 80 now? That could have some affect on his skewed thinking.

[saltpoint]

2. Just one person's take here, but I believe that Hillary Clinton really

does believe in the message of IT TAKES A VILLAGE. I believe she has evolved on the tenets of national health care and that the wonk-factor is a demonstrable plus in both roles as an elected official and as successful career woman.

I don't feel her campaign has been run very well, though, and the combination of Mark Penn, Howard Wolfson, and (in part) the Big Dog himself has been less than produtive and frequently damanging for her. It certainly has not won a lot of friends.

I don't believe she has sold her soul, but I do believe that soul has been obscured by a particularly bungled campaign strategy after the narrow win in New Hampshire.

All 8 of our original announced candidates knew that while there are never any sure-fire guarantees in politics, the Democratic nomination was at WORST a 50-50 tantamount step to the Oval Office, and very likely greater than 50%, given the demoralized condition Dubya and Dick have left their party in. The trendlines supported the blue team. So did the donation rate and amounts, and the new voter registration roll numbers as well.

She could win in Texas, Ohio, and Rhode Island on Tuesday and be right back in the thick of it, or she could lose one, two, three, or all four of the contests that day. If she wins TX and OH narrowly, it doesn't appreciably slow (nevermind halt) Obama's ascent. If she loses TX but carries OH, or the reverse, she gains perhaps some time but the pressure for her to exit is going to turn from specific boulders like John Lewis to a coast-to-coast landslide. Beware of falling rock.

I don't believe her soul is sold. I think it's clouded by a spectacularly inept campaign staff and strategy. And I think her odds are not very good.

[greguganus]

4. She had a soul? n/t

:shrug:

[Sensitivity]

5. I believed she really cared.

[LadyVT]

8. deep spiritual abandonment???? these are Politicians!!! (and SO IS OBAMA)

[Maddy McCall]

9. LMFAO.

Posts tonight getting odder and odder.

[rodeodance]

10. STILL Lecturing!!---get a grip!!

[cooolandrew]

11. Barack clearly has studied how campaigns work to a science. He is unstoppable ask his volunteers.

[Honeycombe8]

12. When the Clintons refused to support Kerry in '04 for their own political gain, the writing ...

the writing was on the wall. They would prefer the economy, the country, the citizens to suffer for four years, than for the country to do better and they possibly not be a in a great position to run for President later.

So they got their wish. People died. People lost health insurance. People lost jobs. People will have significant tax increases in teh future to pay off the huge Bush deficit. But the Clintons are now able to run for President.

I wonder how it's workin' out for them?

[Sensitivity]

13. Can't blame Bill for heart problems. At least he got on the campaign trail after all

[ClayZ]

14. K and R

[BenDavid]

15. I hope by the end, obama comes face to face with the

realization that one cannot play the race card, and race bait and have one of the most popular presidents be labled a bigot and a racist by you and your staff. Before obama tries to heal the hole in our souls maybe he better repair that damn canyon in his....

"More than any other maneuver, this one has brought Clinton into disrepute with important portions of the Democratic Party. A review of what actually happened shows that the charges that the Clintons played the "race card" were not simply false; they were deliberately manufactured by the Obama camp and trumpeted by a credulous and/or compliant press corps in order to strip away her once formidable majority among black voters and to outrage affluent, college-educated white liberals as well as college students. The Clinton campaign, in fact, has not racialized the campaign, and never had any reason to do so. Rather the Obama campaign and its supporters, well-prepared to play the "race-baiter card" before the primaries began, launched it with a vengeance when Obama ran into dire straits after his losses in New Hampshire and Nevada--and thereby created a campaign myth that has turned into an incontrovertible truth among political pundits, reporters, and various Obama supporters. This development is the latest sad commentary on the malign power of the press, hyping its own favorites and tearing down those it dislikes, to create pseudo-scandals of the sort that hounded Al Gore during the 2000 campaign. It is also a commentary on how race can make American politics go haywire. Above all, it is a commentary on the cutthroat, fraudulent politics that lie at the foundation of Obama's supposedly uplifting campaign.

[Sensitivity]

16. Beautiful, quoting a perverted analysis which "blames the victim". Do you know this author?