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Saturday, January 5, 2008 12:00 AM

A Democratic donnybrook

The debate was rich in sound and fury, but did little lasting damage to unruffled frontrunner Barack Obama.

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  • Sunday, January 6, 2008 07:30 PM

    Revealing Times

    Hillary Clinton was, initially, my lead horse in the Democratic race and the idea that we'd have a woman president was immensely attractive. I did have reservations: ex. invoking before an audience of southern African-Americans the trope that she identified with the Civil Rights movement, and doing so in the cadence of Southern Blackspeak when, in reality and when things were really hot on that front in 1964, she avidly worked as a pampered, upper-class teenage volunteer for Mr. "States Rights," Barry Goldwater, a man who may have been personally on the right side of the equality issue but who publicly threw that to the curb for political expediency. There was no doubt about what Goldwater the politician stood for or that it was diametrically opposed to the national fight for civil rights.

    Despite that I saw her as an attractive, hard-working, competent and realistic alternative to the malicious weirdness that had taken hold of the Party of Lincoln and that attitude about her remained until she hit that debate speed-bump in Iowa and, in its aftermath, acted like so many adults who've come from a position of privilege...like someone who's never had true adversity in their formative years, who's never had anything to test them, to let them know what they're made of. When adversity slaps them in the kisser, no matter how transitory the whap upside the head is, they throw a tantrum and lose their bearings. Hillary and her advisors fit that profile, right now, and she and they had better get their bearings [last night wasn't it] or they'll be huzzahing an Obama [or] Edwards candidacy in the general election.

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