Joan Walsh, if you want to regain any sense, feeling, or even conjecture of credibilty you can do the following:

1) Just endorse Hillary already! God, that would give us nothing to complain about. There's nothing wrong with supporting a candidate... as long as you actually announce what you're doing.

2) If you wanted to, you could also retract your stance -- which, to the best of my knowledge, is the only one held by any human being in the Western Hemisphere -- that Hillary wasn't lying when she told her story about Bosnia. And what did you base your belief on? That it would be so crazy for Hillary to tell such a bald-faced lie about Bosnia that she just wouldn't do it? Circular reasoning, anyone?

Otherwise, you have no credibility. Sorry. Zero. None.

cheers,

Oliver Miller

The thing that kills me about Joan Walsh's blogs is that I find them annoying for the same reason that I find the Clinton campaign to be annoying. To wit:

1) Lack of transparency

2) An obsessive attempt to recalibrate the terms of every argument.

As many many other commentators have said, if Joan would just declare her support for Hillary, these blogs would be fine... It is the blatant lack of transparency that makes this blog such a train-wreck, and keeps me coming back, fascinated (so, um, thanks for that, Joan.)

Allow to me repeat: how about starting a blog like this: "I'm Joan Walsh. I think that Senator Clinton is the best choice for President. Allow me to explain why..." Man, that would be refreshing. Instead, week after week, we are treated to these passive-aggressive blogs that continually point out the flaws of Senator Obama, while continually effacing or white-washing the flaws of Senator Clinton; all with a thin scrim of "fair and balanced" dissimulating that makes the blogs themselves a thousand times more irritating. Jesus Christ. Just tell us why you like Hillary, if you do, and why you don't like Obama, if you don't. But stop continually insulting your readership's intelligence.

This blog makes unnecessary trouble for itself, the same way that the Clinton campaign makes unnecessary trouble for itself: the whole Tulza flap was stunning, not only in the way that Senator Clinton continually compounded and amplified her own troubles (during a week in which all she had to do was stay out of new while Obama got pounded) -- no, the Tulza flap was stunning, and hilarious, in that there was no tangible or possible benefit for Hillary in it, ever, even if her Bosnia story had gone off without a hitch. In the same way, I fail to see the benefit of Mrs. Walsh just not acknowledging that -- yes -- she does prefer Senator Clinton. Not doing that just intensifies your readers' annoyance.

God, I'm too tired even to get into issue (2) from my list of two. But I think it's awesome that Joan started her argument with the fairly provocative argument that sexism has been a bigger issue in this campaign than racism, then acted all surprised and hurt-acting when people wanted to -- yes -- debate that. That's pretty much how blog comments are supposed to work, no? Unless I missed something...

And now, Mrs. Walsh has devolved her argument into -- "Well, all I was ever saying was that sexism hurt Hillary in her campaign" -- which, sorry, Joan, is a little different from your original statement.

But yeah, I, uh, do agree. Hillary is facing a bunch of sexism. She's the first viable female candidate for the most powerful position in the world. She's going to have to face a bunch of stupid sexism. Hopefully future candidates will face less sexism. That's kind of how these things work. We now return you to your regularly scheduled news from Duh.com: The Journal of the Painfully Obvious.

cheers,

Oliver Miller

Having given Joan Walsh a fair amount of crap in the past, I have to say that this is a pretty reasonable article by her. Let's all chill out, shall we? If Obama can't survive saying something dumb-ish and impolitic... well, I'm sure that he can.

Relax. Not that my saying this will get anyone to relax, but... Let's all take a deep breath.

...And I have no shame.

Does it bother you that even Glenn Greenwald is mocking you at this point? And I don't mean "even" in a disparaging sense... he's one of your best writers. What I mean to say is: does it bother you that even your own website is mocking you at this point?

...And that thing is reading the comments section on Salon. And it kills me that Walter Shapiro felt the need to dump on Timothy Noah, when Noah managed to write one of the few level-headed columns about the election that I've read in months. And Shapiro calls Noah a -- what was it again -- "rigid numerical determinist." Cute. I guess he's referring to the fact that Noah uses math -- math! -- to calculate the delegate and popular vote in his column. Oh, Noah! Oooh, you! What are you, some kind of math facist? Adding and subtracting and using rational thought-processes and whatnot! Outrageous!

You can read the Noah article here, if you haven't read it already: http://www.slate.com/id/2190556/

...Do we get to stop pretending that Hillary has a chance to win now? You guys let me know. I am but your humble servant.