Walter Shapiro - as it appears to me - nicely simulated "Hillary the prudent". Anyway, this is the age of simulation - so why should I complain!

Hillary is a fully-featured corporate candidate - and that's so obvious! With her presence, I don't see any possibility of a strong grassroots movement in the Democratic camp to resolve the Iraq issue, or the issue of rebuilding the Gulf Coast, or to build an effective national health program, or to make break-through in the field of alternate energy. The corporations might expect further benefits anyway!

Hillary's simplified warning - "America's middle class and working families have become the invisible Americans." As if - she would put an end to outsourcing or force the corporations to practice some kind of "radical humanism"!

Anyway most of the democrats would behave in the same pragmatic way as Hilary is doing currently - for the next 22 months of election frenzy; and it's too early to predict anything!

Isn't resistance to extremism moderate? What's next, "Lieberman the Wise"? Please. Hillary is ambition.

The Fact is that the Dems blew it after 2000, specifically post 9-11, when they could have been an opposition party against an incompetent and radical administration. Triangulating a la Bill Clinton in the face of a nut like Cheney and a bonehead like Bush (if not the downright evil of Rove) was the perfect strategy for political wilderness.

This is prudent? Oscar Meyer. Prudent is Howard Dean, and Obama, and Russ Feingold, who have had the guts and the clarity to change the debate and begin taking back this country.

the last Clinton, excuse me, Hilary article I asked that Salon just come right out and announce their official support of her as the democratic candidate for 2008.

I guess this article comes close enough.

Nader or Kucinich aren't going to be elected president. Either accept the fact that political reality and moral purity are (ususally)incompatible or resign yourselves to indefinite right wing rule.

By being a quintessential DINO, Hillary has guaranteed her loss in the primaries. Assuming she had the left locked up, she's been running a general-election campaign since 2000.

Can't wait to see her face when the progressives bury her in New Hampshire.

With any luck, she'll take the DLC down with her.

I am one of the good senator's constituents & I was concerned with her position on the flag burning amendment. Her solution was a classic piece of amoral triangulation: we don't need an amendment because it should/can be banned under existing law.

Honestly, what the fuck? After the 8 years of abuse of our civil liberties, I need a candidate who can at least stand up for my transparently obvious first amendment right to burn the flag. If they can't get on board, saying unequivocably that burning the flag is a right, screw them. I can't trust them with anything.

First off, to anon, Mr. Obama has been consistently against the war since the start. Check out this interview from *2002* when he was a state senator: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXzmXy226po

As for specific examples of Ms. Clinton's pandering, how about her short-lived "won't somebody think of the children" campaign against violent video games?

Or, more recently, her rediculous fake Southern accent in Selma? http://www.ifilm.com/profile/breitbart/video/2829104

There're lots of words I'd use to describe Ms. Clinton, "authentic" isn't one of them.

Gosh, I feel like I need to brush my teeth after reading that syrupy kiss Mr. Shapiro just blew to Hillary.

she is not a firebrand nor a quixotic crusader, but a politician who believes that progress comes through incremental steps.

We don't need baby steps right now, Mr. Shapiro. Americans want something more, and our country needs way more than that. Has the Right blown its wad? Is 2008 really a Democratic year? Then lets see some honest strides in that direction, not timid, Geisha-style steps. Let's see a real difference between the parties, a new vision, a path to progress, not a march toward the middle.

And I have to say that "practical progressive" sounds a lot like "compassionate conservative" -- and sounds exactly as substantive, and just as credible. It's another fishhook to lodge in the mouth of the credulous voter created by politicians' focus group shock troops, trying to triangulate their way into the Oval Office without having to stake out any real ground on issues that matter.

Shame on Hillary if she runs to the right of Edwards and Obama. We need boldness, not caution, and progress, not moderation. Otherwise, you're basically waving the white flag in surrender before you're out of the gate (even as signs continue to indicate that Americans WANT. SOMETHING. DIFFERENT.)

HRC, for what she miscalculated as political advantage, voted to authorize an illegal war of aggression in contravention of international law.

She is a War Criminal. Period.

Any so called progressive who is willing to ignore that fact for some imagined good that HRC might do in the future is being dishonest or delusional or both.

The Democratic party must come to grips with the fact that many of its national leaders are as complicit in war crimes as BushCheney and that they must be removed from power.

Anything less dooms the Democrats to being no better than Bush Lite if not worse.

It's not popular but yeah, I'll admit it. In retrospect, the Clinton presidency doesn't seem half bad. The economy was doing moderately well, we didn't have fake terrorist scares every five minutes and the post-coital glow from winning the cold war seemed to last forever. Sure, he was a lying two-faced weasel but even time has been kind to Bill Clinton. Looking back, he seems to have become this rapscallion Jimmy Walker type figure, a colorful rascal whose foibles will delight schoolchildren for generations to come.

On the other hand, who really wants to live through that again? Four (or eight) years of flip-flopping? At caving to the slightest hint of Republican pressure? And does anyone here think Bill has licked that zipper problem yet?

Nah, better the devil I don't know. Obama. Edwards. Richardson. Of course, what I'd really like to see is a Dennis Kucinich presidency but thanks to hacks like Walter Shapiro, we're never going to see that.