Nah, I'll just call you irrational and not very smart.

(Gotta love any organization with "Ass" in its name. Says it all, really.)

AKA Smith: Are you the Clintons' personal friend? What possible relevance does what some Obama supporters said about them have to whether Obama or McCain should be the next president?

By the way, Obama supporters didn't make her say "hard-working Americans, white Americans." Is it your position that this was an appropriate thing for her to say? I mean, she's not running against Jesse Helms in the NC Republican Senate primary in the 1980s here.

Joan Walsh: I don't understand your statement that Hillary would be the best VP for Obama but you don't blame him for not picking her in light of Bill. Are you saying that if Bill Clinton disappeared Hillary would be the best pick but because he exists she's not? Or are you saying that she is the best pick despite Bill's baggage but reasonable people can disagree and you think Obama's disagreement is reasonable? Or something else?

I don't care what Hillary supporters say. They can say it's all on Obama to unify the party, but its up to the Clintons as well. its up to the Clintons to put aside their feelings for the good of the party.

If they do not; if the party is not unified because hard core Hillary supporters are still bitter, they'll be the only ones voting for her in 2012.

Democrats just don't give anyone two bites at the presidential apple anymore; just ask John Edwards, Joe Biden etc.

You get one shot and if you lose, you're finished.

Particularly if it appears to some you helped your own party lose in the previous cycle.

Regardless of what happens happens this year, Hillary Clinton will never be President. The memories of the Clinton's unwillingness to move on and what appears a willingness to hold the Democratic Convention hostage will be remember for years.

Ironically, had they simply sucked it up and took the loss this year there may have been a chance for them in 4 years shoudl Obama lose. Hell, she may have been on the ticket this year had her supporters not demanded it or else.

That's funny, I thought we were voting *for* a President, not *against* anonymous, random people who post responses on one specific unmoderated, free internet website.

I do have to disagree about one thing, though. The reason that Hillary will not be picked as VP is that a large percentage of Obama's hard-core supporters have such a visceral dislike -- hatred, even -- of both Clintons that heads would explode in campaign offices all across the nation and it would take weeks to clean up the mess.

I'd much rather see Hillary as a major power on Capitol Hill than exiled to the Naval Observatory.

Of all the witless charges of this primary contest, the idea that people would have forgotten that Obama was black unless the Clinton campaign kept "reminding" them was far and away the winner. The reason Obama's campaign lost momentum as the contest wore on was not, IMO, that "racist dog whistles" were hurting him, it was that more and more people discovered that contrary to what they'd heard for years, Hillary Clinton was wicked intelligent, had the stamina of a man half her age, and was actually a likable human being.

Below are the first two paragraphs from Gleen Greenwald's and Joan Walsh's current posts. The contrast could not be more striking: While one examines primary source material and consults scientific experts in order to reason through an issue of paramount substantive importance, the other leads off with a tale of television preening and directs her comments to an issue of political stagecraft.

***

After obtaining a federal judge's approval to unseal the documents in the anthrax investigation, the FBI has released selected documents relating to its case against Bruce Ivins. Those documents can be viewed here.

I'm in the process of reviewing these documents and will post preliminary thoughts here as I do so, updating this post as I make my way through them, and then will undoubtedly have more to write after I am able to speak with some experts with regard to the FBI's scientific claims.

I got the last word on MSNBC's "Race to the White House" tonight, to insist the Democrats had to find a place for Bill Clinton on the Denver convention agenda later this month. It was a controversial statement on the show, but, whew. Somebody apparently agreed with me. War Room reports the former president will speak before the vice presidential nominee Wednesday night. I hope it's true.

I don't have time to explore Bill Clinton's many roles in this election. I could spend thousands of words defending him, and I could spend thousands of words criticizing him. It really doesn't matter. He is the only two-term Democratic president of my lifetime. The Democratic Party, all of it, needs to come together. Barack Obama needed to find a way to include Bill Clinton, and I'm thrilled that it sounds like he has.

First of all, if Obama loses, it will be his own fault, not Hillary's. Secondly, you can't compare her candidacy to that of Biden and Edwards because they didn't get 18 million votes. And I do think it's Obama's responsibility to unify the party. He's the nominee, and he ran a campaign based on bringing people together.

First of all, there's a big difference between racist views personally and using race to advance one's campaign. From everything that I know, John McCain is not personally a racist either but there is no doubt in my mind that he has and will use race in many ways to diminish Obama's chances. That is exactly what the Clintons did as well--with Hilliary's talk about the "hard-working white voters" who were in her camp and Bill's dismissiveness of the result of the SC primary, given that Jesse Jackson had won there previously and had gone no where.

Secondly, you're way off the mark when you say that white people are not subject to ethnic abuse and stereotypes as well. I'm of Scandinavian and English heritage but I can remember being deliberately rammed by a bicycle and called a "dirty bohunk" by a kid who had obviously absorbed the hateful lessons of his parents all too well. The Irish, the Italians, the Poles, and many others all have nasty sobriquets attached to them. While the situation may have improved, Jews and blacks are not the only ones who have suffered discrimination.