I.

He makes an argument about Obama's attacks on Hillary's stance on NAFTA and health care without noting that Hillary has supported free trade agreements while a Senator, and she has made positive statements about NAFTA. Obama's mailing uses one quote by Clinton that is apparently slim sourced, but NPR and other media have pointed out that she has made other similar positive statements, even in her book. (Of course Obama has also made positive statements about free trade in his book but that is not something Willentz mentions.) And as for the health care mailings, they are no more misleading to mosts observers than the flyers Clinton sent out claiming that Obama doesn't support womens' right to choose....Within the context of this campaign I have not seen that Obama's mailers are more misleading than, say Clinton's ads in South Carolina that accused him of supporting the ideas of Reagan.

II.

He fails to mention the example that drew most peoples' attention: the person (I've forgotten who it was now) who said that Obama might be seen as a drug dealer. The drug dealer remark was thought by some people to be racial, since Obama had only mentioned experimenting with taking drugs. He had never mentioned selling them. No one ever assumed that George Bush was a drug dealer when he took cocaine because that is supposedly a racial thing. So that remark was considered to be less innocent than the example that Willentz chooses to give for his argument. Willentz' thesis allows for gender blindness while focusing primarily on Obama's race. This seems out of balance. ie. what about a "gender card" is it less insidious to play a gender card? What would that imply about gender? That it doesn't matter to American history or society? That's, well, sexist.

III.

He calls Frank Rich a vehement Obama supporter at the New York Times, without mentioning Krugman (who he quoted in section one against Obama's health care mailings) has been at least as vehement for Clinton. Also since John Lewis has switched his support to Obama, it now seems inaccurate and possibly wishful to call this article "inaccurate and possibly wishful" that described Lewis' contemplation of changing his support.

Finally, in an appeal to emotions, blaming Obama's supporters for the photo of Obama in the turban forgets the fact that Drudge said it was a Clinton supporter who turned it in to him. Is Drudge part of Obama's media support? Why would Drudge would lie to protect Obama? Right now Obama is leading in the delegate count and in the polls, so why would his supporters need a stunt like this? And why would Drudge want Obama to win when Obama is beating McCain in the polls with more ease than Clinton?

Still, Willents' weakest argument is that if Obama hadn't somehow tricked people into thinking that the Clintons are a couple of spooks then all would be different. This presupposes that the Clintons have not made any contributions toward their own fall...and also to the idea that to like Obama better means to not like the Clintons at all, which many of us who voted for the Clintons and supported them during their darkest hours find hard to believe.

NPR which I love dearly is no supporter of Obama...they all but call him "that young black guy" (clearly old white people are the base). And CNN hasn't been offering pillows to Obama either. They seem to think Clinton has all the stuff to be commander in chief.

But reducing history to an argument is what articles like Willentz' are supposed to do. They're supposed to make us think. But in stacking the cards, I don't think he's made anything more than a cheap jab that discounts the intelligence and the depth of analysis at least half of the Democratic party including important thinkers like John Lewis and Toni Morrison, politicians like Chris Dodd and Russ Feingold, strategists like Samantha Power etc. etc.