If refusing to acknowledge defeat (or merely reality) is a characteristic of testicular fortitude, than Joan is a great match for Hillary in the "balls" department. A real woman admits defeat.

One of the interesting things the Bush administration has demonstrated is that there is real power in the Presidency [...]

The Congress, especially during the Republican majority, really enabled all of Bush's activities. They rubber stamped all the bad decision making, including the wiretapping and torture from what I hear. The public bought into the Iraq marketing campaign as well to seal the deal.

That's why I'd rather see one party hold the Executive and the other hold the Congress. Our system relies on one branch checking the other, and the party system undermines those checks and balances. Look at the republicans who backed the new G.I. bill suddenly withdrawing support due to party pressure. Evil.

We may need both branches of government to back out of the Bush years, but there's also a danger there as well.

Joan Walsh imagines male genitalia on Hillary Clinton? That's news?

In the last week and a half H. Clinton has given cover for McCain's inane gas tax holiday. And her "obliterate Iran" moment has given cover to the Administration's bunker-busting plans. If there's anything that Clinton has proved in her rightward moves it's that she might as well be Republican, if she's not already. No wonder she and O'Reilly seemed to have a shared moment when discussing their lessers from their privileged positions.

Obama has become the candidate on the left by merely staying in the center. Such is politics in America 2008.

Joan Walsh always takes a substantive stance

It takes BALLS to have THAT kind of integrity.

Re the pandering gas tax holiday and Hillary 'staying the course' in spite of evidence to the contrary. This is nuts, this is what the problem is with Bush. Stubborn in the face of contrary facts is what has brought us to this bleeding place called Iraq. No more, no more. Can we please have someone who is willing to stand up and say they were wrong, they made a mistake, and someone else was right? That would be courage and that would be testicular fortitude.

I have to admit Obama showed brass ones when he gave that speech a couple of weeks ago and said "I can no more disown Reverend Wright than I can disown the black community or than I can disown my white grandmother."

Wasn't that courageous and The Ones We Are Waiting For-ish?

So we love a fighter and some one who loves to fight. Especially most right wing types, who love it even more than the left wingers (for those of you who claim that the left abhors violence, I give you the letters section of Salon for the past several months).

Hillary has really come alive in the last few months now that she has a fight on her hands. Her speeches are better. She's pumped, her demeanor is charged. Her old enemies on the right will give her a gladiators salute out of respect. They'll still try to wipe her out in the fall.

Bush won by posturing as a kick ass Texan, and by painting a Vietnam vet as a wuss. The same trick is in progress for painting Obama as elitist and effete. She's laying down the gauntlets. "We'll Obliterate Iraq". "You're either with her or against her on the Gas Tax".

My problem with Hillary is that I suspect that she loves to fight a bit too much, which makes her more a brawler than a field general. A little compromise on healthcare in '92 might have made a big difference. She's supposed to have learned from that experience, but she's made the same all or nothing stance again on the gas tax. It's already publically pissed off one undecided super delegate, Udall.

Personally, I always take a little brains to go along with my balls.

Your three point post is the most candid post ever published here.

I know it's truthful because I went through precisely the same conversion process as the one you describe witnessing, and you wouldn't recognize or be able to describe how she wins over voters if you hadn't both seen it with your friends and noticed you were being forced to acknowledge her strengths.

Most Obama supporters likely notice it too, but they just decide to adjust their blinders or just gouge their eyes out to avoid those acknowledgments.

I used to sound like Keith Olbermann when I would gleefully trash what I expected to be her quick and easy Democratic primary destruction, sometimes even resorting to some sexist cheap shots.

Not only did she earn my resistant vote, I've donated more than I can afford.

Yes. And truly, unless you've got a Kerry (great man, but those crazies who argued he was electable must love lawn-bowling) who's going to bore one to many voters into picking the opposition, it IS the issues and really ONLY the issues that count.

One of the interesting things the Bush administration has demonstrated is that there is real power in the Presidency, even without popularity and political savvy. He's demonstrated how much damage can be done with that bill signing/vetoing pen and the commander-in-chief gig. The corollary, of course, is how much good could be done by a president with the RIGHT (I mean, of course, Left) policy goals.

I WISH that were Clinton. But something in all that "truthy" campaigning feels like genuine contempt. And then there are those votes!

Okay, let's say Obama is not a great man just because he gave full throated opposition to the war from the beginning. That was easy, some might say, or obvious. So let's not give him any merit points for it.

But HOW does HRC overcome the DEmerits? (Or wash her hands of all that BLOOD?)

Some will argue that it was the prudent thing to do. Everybody did it. She acted on the intelligence she was given.

Um, but... an unprovoked war of aggression is an actual crime against humanity.