If Hillary wasn't a Clinton, her bid for the White House would have gone the way of those of her colleagues like Joe Biden's.

Instead, due entirely to her access to the most powerful members of her party and their prominent financial patrons, she has mounted a campaign completely out of proportion to any popular mandate for it. In that regard, her campaign is identical to that of George W. Bush's.

Another way her campaign is like Bush's is that both have been willing to resort to any despicable tactic to defeat their primary foes. In the 90's, I cherished Clinton's Presidency, and I defended Hillary. But with this campaign, she has proven true one of the frequent insinuations about the Clintons, that they'd do anything to hold onto power.

Hillary has been an unremarkable Democratic Senator, one wrong on the most critical issue she faced, and I can't wait to see her lose.

Hey thanks for the link! I read the story, which was a nice little piece, but forgot to read the readers' comments.

It's funny, though....the article is as much about the writer as it is about Obama. Most of the details of Obama's rise up the political ladder aren't exactly damning; they just make Obama seem like an ambitious young guy who probably stepped on a few people on his way up. But the author makes it clear that most of them didn't feel like Obama played dirty, they just felt snubbed, and the author mentions that they mostly support Obama now. It is interesting to note that Obama didn't pass much of his legislation without help, but I don't feel that he should be condemned for that (how many successful politicians get legislation enacted from the ground up without outside assistance?).

The details about Obama getting his opponents' signatures disqualified are murky, but I do wonder: If Obama's action here was legal, what was wrong with it? Couldn't his opponents collect 750 signatures in a way that dotted the i's and crossed the t's, and if not, why not? I agree that Obama probably had it easy when the "Deep Space Nine" actress' husband had to release his divorce records, but, hey, that's not Obama's fault (or IS IT? Did somebody force the judge to release those records to make sure Obama could win?! Was it Captain Picard? Conspiracy alert! Conspiracy alert!)

It sounds like Obama's record is a mixed bag that has mostly positive aspects, but some negative ones. I am not surprised. That said, in spite of however Obama got as far as he did, I don't think there's any question he's got an intelligence and political talent all his own.

(in case anybody is wondering, the article is here: http://www.houstonpress.com/2008-02-28/news/barack-obama-screamed-at-me/full#comments)

Josie Ortez: "Any thoughts on the yes vote for the Cheney Energy bill? Patriot Act? "Present" vote on Stem Cell Research?"

I dunno, I will have to look some of those up to find out what Obama did and why. I seem to recall at least one of those bills being rejected by Obama because of some of the wording or some objectionable things in the small print. But I'll Google around and see if there are any articles where he explains his votes.

I have spent the last few days making calls to potential supporters of Sen. Obama, while waiting for the pasta to boil, while asking that the music be turned down and that the dinner table be set. And at every opportunity I have taken time--15 minutes here, 30 minutes there--to make phone calls to potential voters in Texas and Ohio. I know every nuance and every aspect of Sen. Obama's stance, policies, and approaches. I spent my lunch break today making calls--I got through to an octogenarian who called me a traitor to my gender (I kept quiet and listened) and then I got through to someone who wanted to vote for Clinton because she felt that she MUST vote for a woman. Any woman. I think I managed to persuade her to at least consider Sen. Obama. But what stands out about my conversations are, well, the conversations. During our discussions about politics, we talked about family, our worries, the fact that post offices really should stay open after 5:00pm (at least in my state).

My point? When I come into the letters section of this site or, really, the letters/comments sections in all news sites, I hear dismally and depressing reductive and offensively narrow-minded dehumanization of us--Obama supporters or Clinton supporters. The comments are -- for the most part -- so unbelievably disconnected from my experience and from that who have been volunteering for several exhausting months, I sometimes cannot help but wonder if the posters here are computer generated AI robots (mostly malfunctioning ones).

Frankly, the pure viciousness of some of the arguments is precisely what fundamentally makes these "democratic" elections rather farcical and surreal. Today, right now as I write this, fleets of U.S. battle ships are sailing towards Lebanon; all signs are pointing towards a pre-emptive strike against Iran before Bush leaves office; Gazans are suffering collective punishment of starvation...with some doctor recommended doses of heavy air strikes. At home, I watch my house value plummet, my health bills spiral out of control, and I listen to my vet insist that one of my cat's tooth be pulled, immediately.

So tonight, for some reason, I feel weighed down by these comments here because they exemplify the cavernous divide between pundits and us and then those other us.

The polls about and the commentaries on the elections are no better. They are just as reductive, dehumanizing, and often can only elicit outright WTF?, as in the cases of articles like the "The Dude Vote" opinion piece.

Tomorrow morning I will make breakfast for my family, clean the litter box, probably have some arguments about who left the pot roast on the counter overnight, go to work, and then use every free second I can find and call a potential Obama supporter in the hopes of getting him or her to consider voting for him. I do this not because I need a cult to join (my family is all the cult I can handle). I do this not because I am caught up in a fairy tale (thinking I can get my cat into his pet carrier is all the fairy tale I can invest in).

The point of my post here, which may not even be relevant at all, is that those of us who are volunteering for the campaigns are not some alien species, suddenly surfacing from the deep bottom of the Antarctic waters (along with those cool giant water spiders--how freaking awesome are those? Really.) We are just every day people. We bleed red blood when cut (while chopping onions) and not toxic green sludge. We sit around the dinner table and talk about what happened at work, in school, and in the news.

My request (for those of you who are still awake after getting this far): Please, take a few minutes before you hit the "publish my letter" button and think about what you did today for the political process that gives you the right to categorically denounce or reject or to denounce and reject us and our candidates of choice. What and who do these generalized and sweeping vitriolic statements serve?

Maybe I am exhausted tonight, but I feel sad, and have been feeling sad, not at the media coverage (I expect it to be sound-bite driven drivel--yeah, I am including you, Joan Walsh), but at the enmity and abusive responses from people I thought I would find strength from.

For now, I am thinking cat = into pet carrier. And also about whether or not I should heed my own advice and not hit "publish letter" for a post that has, against my best intentions, ended up being just plain drivel.