If she handled it well, it is easy to imagine Hillary taking over as, if not majority leader, then the position up until recently held by Kennedy. She could and should lead from the Senate. This will be especially important if, under an Obama administration, the country had its three co-equal branches of government restored.

I am happy with the democratic field we had, but I think the Senate has really suffered for the absence of the two remaining candidates and Dodd and Biden. Two years have been wasted. It's time to get to work and Hillary could become the leading figure in that process.

Kennedy went to Washington in '62, but it was really when he returned to the senate after his failed challenge to Carter that he became the iconic figure he is today. I hope 30 years from now, we are looking back at Clinton's career assessing the positive role she played in salvaging the country from the neo-con mess.

Thank you Glenn for continuing to hammer these false accusations of "judicial activism." Some will say that it has no effect, but I think that the more these arguments are clearly made, the more the Ron Paul Republicans will realize how far their views are from the rest of their party. It is also helpful to re-focus the argument on the real issue (rights) and not on red herrings (whether people like gay marriage or not).

In arguing with right wing colleagues recently, I asked what they would say to a law which more severely limited all gun ownership if it was supported by a clear majority of the population (as polls show us it is)? Of course that would be wrong, because the 2nd amendment guarantees a right no matter how much the alleged latte-sippers don't like it.

It seems analogizing the issue about policies they support is the only way to make any headway.

a lout trying to steal my girlfriend in college and me being a petty, petty, petty man

Hey! I despised Liverpool for years because of a similar story (except I may have been the lout and he ended up marrying her.) But we all get along now and I still smile whenever Liverpool loses and Man U wins, not because I like Man U, but because I know it bugs him.

I know this story does not reflect well on me, but I never said I was perfect...

I despise the politics of personal destruction, but it will not do the democrats any good to ignore them. The stakes are too high to play nice. Another Republican term and the Supreme Court is lost for a generation or two.

Obama should stay clear of course, but there should plenty of well funded 527s this cycle who will politely agree to disagree with Obama when he says stop.

They should expose every hypocritical Republican for, in no particular order, marriage infidelity, closeted homosexuality, preference for paid sex partners, drug use, ties to lobbysists, ties to casinos, ties to arms manufacturers, etc.

Republicans have been able to velcro "Democrat" and "effete/unpatriotic" together. It makes no difference what the Democrat has done. War hero? Bullshit. He's effete and reads French and likes book learning; he must hate America.

The way to stand up to a bully is to punch him in the nose. You can do this two ways. The first is what Obama is doing: respond forcefully to every attack, call them naive, and repeat endlessly that the emperors have no clothes on.

The second way is for independent 527s to completely tarnish the word Republican so that it may never be associated with "respectable" again. Republican must mean "hypocrite". It must mean "liar". It must mean "elitist" (not in the sense of reading, you know, books, but in the let's funnel billions of dollars to our cronies). Conveniently and unlike the swiftboat attacks, it happens to be true.

There's room for lots of different 527s: some for high minded revelations of policy positions and some for releasing the pictures of Karl "Miss Piggy" Rove making out with anonymous men in gay bars in DC.

I have a question about the results issue. Why isn't every "pro-life" politician asked every time the issue is brought up why they didn't pass a law outlawing abortion when they had 6 years of both houses and the white house?

It would almost appear that they like it more as a campaign plank to beat the Dems with than an actual outcome they care about? I know Roe v Wade would have limited them, but why not start passing test cases? Why not chip away at abortion rights? Nothing.

Does anyone at Salon copy edit before you post things? I stopped reading after the third error.