All that was necessary was to read the headline on this one to know absolutely for certain that at least 90 percent of the reader comments would be something on the order of, "Clinton shill Sean Wilentz is a complete POS and so is salon.com for having the audacity to publish this POS which argues that that POS Hillary Clinton is actually a better bet because of all those POS popular-vote states which aren't smart enough to hold [bring in celestial choir] caucuses. Furthermore, rules are rules and even if they're asinine, they do favor MY candidate, so for the moment they're perfectly fine, and you can take those POS states MI and FL and stuff them where the sun don't shine."

People, this was an opinion piece, clearly labeled so (which is far more than the Masters Of The MSM are willing to do these days). Far as I know, opinions are still legal, and many of you have had NO compunction about posting the most vile slurs of Hillary Clinton and her supporters on this site, not to mention uttering loud hosannas in the wake of any opinion piece favoring Obama. But, ah, let Sean Wilentz raise his voice in support of Clinton, and you immediately form an online lynch mob.

So, tell us: just how long will opinions remain legal under President Obama, that is, those unfavorable to him. A month? A week? Mere hours?

Ah, M. Villemar, so all that vitriol from Obama fans I've been wiping off the monitor for lo these many weeks is actually essence of valentine in disguise? How perfectly dense of moi.

You say: "Wilentz may wish it otherwise, but Obama is winning, fairly, under the rules as they are."

How does actively seeking to prevent a revote in MI and FL constitute fair play? Or playing the "uncommitted vote" game in MI which Wilentz references? Or strong arming the caucuses in TX (there were games aplenty on the part of the Obama campaign here, I can assure you)?

An issue which relates to the topic at hand: just how does Obama begin to qualify as a "transformative" candidate any longer, given his campaign's demonstrated ability to play typically crafty political games (among other things)? This was one of those boasts made about Obama early and often by both his supporters and the MSM. But that one seems to have gone right out the window. A sound argument can be made that many of Obama's votes were won under false pretenses, something which tends to lessen their persuasive value in the current slinging match.

Your accounting of Hillary Clinton's political evolution was pretty evenhanded until the last sentence, to wit:

"But her best chance at winning the nomination may lie in shaking loose some extra delegates -- working the levers of the party machinery behind closed doors, just the way Mayor Daley might have done it long ago."

Here you portray Sen. Clinton as a potential dirty dealer out to "steal the nomination", as so many highly partisan salon readers have already characterized her. When Obama twists arm behind closed doors, however, he is invariably characterized as a skilled politician who simply knows how to run a winning campaign. In view of your conflation of Clinton with Mayor Daley of Chicago (the city where Obama himself learned the ropes) would you care to tell us how the senator from Illinois stacks up next to the senator from New York in terms of a propensity for back room political machinations?

Ah, nice to know that I'm not the only one tempted to think of Obama and his worst zealots in terms of those who brought Holy Mother Russia her worst nightmare. The rigidity, the harsh judgments and demonizing, the desire to punish and destroy, the cloaking of self in garments of historic virtue and false redemption, the bullying and cluelessness underneath the veneer of bravado...it's all there.

Oh, so now we're down to the definition of 'bookbag'? Maybe it was a paper bag, a cloth bag, a laundry bag. Who cares? Okay, can we now move on to the many, many hyperbolic, largely fabricated passages in Obama's self-defining autobiographies, those two slender tomes which have funded both his fortune and his fortunes? You know, the books he later admitted to peopling with composite characters? Are you fine with those? I mean, as opposed to a single, flipping bookbag?

You seem to be new to the salon site and unaware that chhabili is one of the more toxic posters here, quite an achievement as there's some pretty stiff competition. It's a complete waste of time to defend your bona fides on this site to the likes of chhabili. You'll simply lay yourself open to continued sniping. Better to grow the hide of an online armadillo and know that underneath that shell, your integrity continues on, safe and sound.

So, would either of you care to address the far more substantive matter of Obama's extensive autobiographical fabrications, not to mention a whole passel of his much more recent lies/distortions/prevarications? Your comrade above hasn't answered and your candidate is busy at the moment in PA wrapping himself in the American flag. You know, the one that's in danger of regressing to 48 stars among certain Democratic circles?