I think Hillary Clinton is absolutely right to suggest that she’s been criticized in the press more than any other candidate, but the way I see it, her fame is a two-edged sword. While she gets held to a different standard due to her fame, she wouldn’t be where she is now if it weren’t for her name recognition and the fact that she inherited her husband’s political machine. Just as it’s puzzling that she somehow deserves credit for all the good things that happened during the 90’s but none of the bad, if she’s willing to capitalize on the unique advantages of her position as the inheritor of the legacy of the previous president (and all the political and fundraising power that comes along with it), she should have been prepared to deal with the unique challenges that come along with that as well.

For a candidate who constantly touts herself for being “prepared” to be president, Clinton’s lack of preparation in dealing with an antagonistic media doesn’t bode well for her prospects in a general election (much less her ability to govern). A smart campaign would take media bias as a given and come up with a plan to mitigate these negatives, yet this week, Hillary has settled on the strategy of whining about the press being mean to her, seemingly blind to the fact that this is an industry full of yellow journalists who have spent the past fifteen years printing and broadcasting some truly shameful muck. Was the Clinton campaign really naive enough to think they’d be any different this year?

With hindsight being 20/20, it seems to me that the Clinton campaign’s strategy should have been to treat their candidate like an underdog all along, highlighting every trivial item written about Hillary and using her quasi-bully pulpit to use these examples as “proof” that the media it out to get her. Instead, they spent most of the past year insisting on Hillary’s “inevitability” and reveling in the press’s willingness to help them write the storyline. Yet for all their media savvy in using early polling and press laziness to declare the nomination over before it began, they seem to have made the mistake of believing their own bullshit and got caught off-guard when the pendulum of press opinion predictably swung back and hit them in the ass. Once again, this doesn’t really do much to convince me that she’d be a good general election candidate or that she’d be “ready on day one” to deal with an hostile press.

Thankfully, a Clinton candidacy is something we won’t need to worry about for much longer.

At tonight’s debate, Tim Russert engaged in one of the most vile and reprehensible lines of questioning I’ve ever seen in a debate. It started with a question to Obama about an endorsement he received from Louis Farrakhan, which Obama rejected and followed with a reminder that he has consistently denounced Farrakhan for his anti-semitic hate speech. Rather than drop the issue there, Russert had a followup “question” which was little more than an excuse to quote some of Farrakhan’s more infamous remarks and mention that the minister at Obama’s church is friends with Farrakhan. So despite the fact that Obama repeatedly denounced Farrakhan without even being prompted to do so, the goal of Russert’s little game of “Six Degrees of Barack Obama” seems to be to give voters the impression that Barack Obama hates Jews.

If using the word “pimped” is enough to get you suspended at MSNBC, Tim Russert’s shameful attempt to link Obama to anti-semitism should be grounds for dismissal.

Why should any Democrat waste their time chasing the Evangelical vote when their shrinking ranks weren’t even powerful enough to help Mike Huckabee the Republican nomination? It seems to me that the downsides (pissing off your base, looking like a shameless panderer to independents) outweigh the upsides by far.

Every time Lou Dobbs says the word “aliens”, America gets one step closer to Hell. Except if he’s referring to extra-terrestrials, which would be awesome.

Please tell me I’m not the only one who saw this :

Since the race is all but decided on both the Democratic and Republican sides, here’s a few random things that have been going through my mind :

- It’s funny how quickly conservatives are so quick to jump on Michelle Obama for a relatively innocuous statement. If the right-wing really wants to drag the candidates’ wives into the mud-slinging, let’s start a conversation about how John McCain’s wife is a former drug-addict who was investigated by the DEA for stealing drugs from a non-profit organization. Do they really want to go there?

- This business about Obama’s “pledge” to opt for public matching funds is silly. If he opts out, it’ll be a story for 2-3 days and then die. If he opts-in, he kneecaps himself for the general election at a time when he’s sure to raise millions of dollars more than McCain. What Obama needs to do is publicly criticize McCain’s smarmy plan to use public funds to bail out his campaign in case he didn’t get the nomination and insist that when it comes to the spirit of the law, Obama’s the one on the side of the angels here. John McCain is self-righteously trying to take the moral high ground by seeking taxpayer money to match the contributions of his lobbyist and corporate pals while Barack Obama raked in the cash by getting small dollar donations from more than a half a million ordinary Americans. So which campaign has a claim to the mantle of “publicly funded”?

- In 1992, the Clinton campaign’s mantra was “It’s the economy, stupid”. This year, I think the Obama campaign’s should be “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks”. It’s hard to listen to McCain speak in the future tense and take it seriously when the man has no new ideas. Even worse for McCain, when late-night talkshows are already joking about him like he’s Mr. Magoo, you know he’s in for a rough nine months.

- Finally, is it just me or does McCain’s candidacy lack a coherent raison d’être? Hillary Clinton is the hyper-ambitious former first lady who wants to continue where her husband left off. Mike Huckabee is the conservative regular fella who wants to do save our nation from moral decay. Barack Obama is the inspirational guy who wants to bring people together to Change™ the nation. John McCain? He seems to be this year’s “I’ve been around Washington forever and it’s my turn to run for President” guy. Maybe he’ll have more luck with “Vote for me, I’m really old.” than Bob Dole did, but I wouldn’t bet on it.

As awful as it would be for superdelegates to pick the candidate at odds with the winner of the pledged delegates and/or the popular vote, I can sorta see the value in giving elected officials and party activists an extra say in who represents the party. The supers should, in theory at least, be motivated to pick the candidate who best represents the Democratic party. I’m not so sure the same can be said of independents and fair-weather Democrats who show up to open primaries to vote for what they see as the lesser of two or more evils. It’s undemocratic, but I get it.

Having said that, I think the clear choice of superdelegates would have to be Barack Obama. Yes, Hillary has a longer history with the party, but isn’t it better for the long-term growth of the party for its leader to be the guy who’s bringing tens of thousands of new voters to the polls? The Democratic party would be best served by expanding its reach beyond its traditional bases of support and who would be better to do that than the man who’s been racking up double digit leads in the south, midwest, rural areas, and other enclaves that the traditional Dem leadership has completely written off?

An even greater motivator for the superdelegates would be to have the Democratic brand associated with another nine months of Obama’s stadium-filling crowds. If I was one of those superdelegates running for reelection in an “insignificant” state, I’d jump at the opportunity to have Barack come into my district and be able to join him onstage for a massive rally. If Obama becomes the nominee, not only will he travel beyond the 5-10 states that old-school, electoral math-obsessed politicians like the Clintons would campaign in, but his continued candidacy would have a ripple effect throughout the party.

Even if you discount the presidential race itself, the party would be best served by having Obama be its public face between now and November. He draws bigger crowds, he raises more money, he campaigns in more states, and he brings more new voters into the Democratic ranks. If the thing that makes a superdelegate “super” is that they’re longtime, trusted members of the party, they’d be fools to pass up the chance to expand the Democratic party and make it more powerful than ever.

(As an aside, I bet the GOP is really wishing they had superdelegates right now. It must suck to accidentally nominate somebody you hate.)

The Clinton campaign has spent nearly $500,000 on parking?? Maybe her staff could help the campaign by taking the bus or carpooling.

For all of those undecided, uncommitted voters who don’t really pay attention to the news and probably only get the Sunday paper for the ads, I can’t help but wonder how they’ll react to tomorrow’s headlines declaring “Obama, Huckabee Win Clean Sweeps”. Frontrunners aren’t supposed to get their asses kicked this badly.

Last weekend, I was phone banking for the Obama campaign and left a few dozen answering machine messages. It was pretty much what you’d expect. I sat in front of a computer, dialed some numbers, and recited the message from a script. Unfortunately, the script’s key line seemed to be written by someone who never bothered to try to read the line out loud :

“I’m supporting Senator Obama because he is committed to overcoming the partisan political battles that have tied up the government during the past two decades”

Needless to say, the sentence length and alliteration made this difficult to say without sounding like a stuttering idiot.

The phone bankers seemed to be split into two groups, the people who awkwardly tried to make it through the script and left amateurish messages or those who just ventured off-script and winged it. Those in the second group (of which, I’m embarrassed to say, I wasn’t a part) did great, but in having a phone script too difficult to say, the campaign sacrificed a lot of message control to their volunteers. If they’re cool with that, they’re probably be better off replacing the script with some talking points instead.

I’m not complaining about the script’s message itself, I’m just sayin’ a couple of word changes and a well-placed comma would have helped a lot.