If the issue is limited to electability, it ought to be fairly obvious from the primaries to date, that Obama is IN FACT drawing more support from Republicans and Independents in open primaries. Hillary's "edge" has been her her support from the "regular" Democartic machinery enhanced by her understandable strong support from white women.

The problem is that that hook-up between the women's vote and the Democratic polls lost two disastrous elections in a row. My anecdotal experience is that Hillary has in fact become a divisive figure outside the Democratic family and that she would be a unifying factor for the Republicans while Obama would not.

Neither Obama's pull for Republicans or Independents and Hillary's problems with the swing voters is anecdotal.

We have lost two straight Presidential elections that played in safe and played to the Democratic base. Bill Clinton never received 50% of the vote and owed his first election - let's face it - to Ross Perot. Hillary can win but the race will be tighter.

It isn't just that Obama is running well in "Red" states, it's the reason he is running well. That reason appears to be the sense that he can draw in voters who are not ordinarily Democratic. In some respects, the Ben Nelson endorsement in Nebraska is emblematic of that.

That being said, I would certainly vote for Hillary against McCain under any foreseeable circumstance. But, so what? I also voted for Gore and Kerry.

It may very well be that key primary in the next few weeks will be Virginia. It's an open primary in an "old South" state that has been trending Democratic. It's an open primary. If Hillary's can win there, then I think she will blunt the Obama argument about electability. However, based upon my anecdotal conversations the past few years with Virginians, don't bet on it.

This is where I came in, children. I can not believe that 20 years after the fall of the USSR, someone's claiming Obama's mother was a Communist. Talk about desperation. There was a time when Walter Winchell took a Roy Cohn leak and red-baited Lucille Ball. She survived. Also, the incredible gifted Judy Holliday survived although she was banned from "I've got a Secret" for a few years by CBS.

I have an objection to "anonymous" comments. It's not that there shouldn't be any, it's that it's hard to tell if the same idiot is making all the idiocy that "Anonymous" posts. Is there one Anonymous or 20 Anonymii. Maybe Salon should change the anonymous feature to assign a number to a subscriber so that we could sort out the nonsense. Of course, the orginal nonsense was not by Anonymous but Anonymous piled on to support it and may be giving approval for the Clinton campaign.

I still think that Anonymous may be a shill from the Clinton campaign. Maybe it's Bill or Mark Penn.

But if there is a Democrat in my party who would take seriously a red-baiting of Obama's mother, then please do me a favor and GET OUT OF MY PARTY YOU JOE MCCARTHY STOOGE.

But the problem with red baiting is not the red baiter but those who take it seriously today. It's like Sammy Glick said in the TV presentation of Bud Shulberg's "What Makes Sammy Run" all those years ago. "The question isn't what makes me run, the question is why do you run after?" The book was originally a comment on Hitler. When the TV play came along, it was a comment on Joe McCarthy.

I say this as a card carry member of the "Anti-Communist Left." I served in the Army as a "tweener" between Korea and Vietnam and my one pass at glory was when I was temporarily assigned to the "Battle Staff" of Fifth Region Army Air Defense Command during the Cuban Missile Crisis. There really wasn't much glory in it. I can not recall one affirmative act that I did as a member of the "Battle Staff" except that I was confined to my "fox hole" at Fort Sheridan Illinois where PT consisted of a round of golf.

Politically, I later clashed with the old Bolshevik's in the NYS Democratic Party, who distrusted me because I was unapologetically "Catholic" even though I ran as a pro-choice candidate for State Senator in 1972 - before Roe v. Wade. ("McGovern giveth and McGovern taketh away). I side with the late Mary McCarthy's disdain for Lillian Hellman.

That later in my life some of the old left became supporters of some things I did is not so much a fact that I changed, but that they submersed their prior ideology to common causes such as nuclear non-proliferation and women’s rights.

But my God, if Hillary Clinton's people attempt to make hay out of a claim that Obama's mother was a communist, I may very well NOT vote for her. Come-on, Anonymous, who are you?