Oh so nice of Ickes to do the Republican attack machine's job so it gets a good head start. This boils down to, "We've got to destroy Obama to keep the Republicans from destroying him."

Well, Obama has withstood Ickes and Hilary so far, is once more gaining ground despite the attacks, will turn the Republican hit machine into the laughing stock it should be - not the irresistible force Ickes depicts, with no one but Ultra Divisive Hilary able to stand up to it. These creeps are building up the status and influence of the Republican sleazemeisters, saying they get to determine who should be the Democratic nominee.

How low can Hilary go, and how long? The superdelegates do need to act no matter how much it pisses off Hilary's supporters to see the Hilary Hit Machine shut down. She's not only destroying Obama to save the Republicans the trouble, she's destroying the Democratic Party to save them the trouble.

Ickes should just sit down with Karl Rove and they can decide who should succeed George W. Bush. What other system can withstand criticism?

Doesn't it seem to you that something about this so nuanced "concern" just doesn't ring true? It may be that I don't want to believe it, but to me there's also the distinct possibility that the Clinton people are making this up out of whole cloth. The press is telling us Obama's come through. The polls are saying the same thing. But somehow not the Clintons. Considering there's no way to verify just which superdelegates have revealed themselves to Ickes, even less of a way to tell how many (two?), I say we just might be in the Clinton non-reality based universe again.

Carter lost the election because of Iran and fuel shortages.

Hillary is treading in dangerous waters if she goes down this road. The party has changed a lot in the past four years.

I don't think this kind of nonsense will be tolerated.

Well said! It's not a racist standpoint at all, but they are talking about a million other reasons for her to stay in; but at the end of the day they just don't think Americans will vote for him.

The Swift Boat campaign wouldn't have hurt Kerry as much as it did if he hadn't let it fester. Ignoring it and hoping it would go away, or worse, that the falsehood of the charges would be obvious to voters, was stupid.

Obama and David Axelrod know better than that. I think Barack Obama's a better politician than John Kerry, too.

I disagree. What happened to Kerry was his personality. You do remember that they elected Bush even through he did not attend his National Guard Duty.

Personality goes a long way. Where I live if the nominee is Hillary, they will vote McCain. these are crossver Republicans and Independents.

Of course race will play a part in the general if Obama is the Dem candidate. And of course, some (mostly older) whites will choose not to vote for Obama as a result.

But folks seem to be forgetting about under-30 voters, mixed-race voters, and the many, many white voters who are going to be turned off by the race-baiting. What Clinton needs to make very, very clear — and I'm waiting for her to do so — is that the group of potential Dem voters that has trouble with Wright is much, much larger than the group that has trouble with making Wright an issue. She and others need to do this to show us all that Willie Horton still works as a campaign tactic, even — and perhaps especially — when Democrats use it against one another.

I'm waiting.

Gee. So someone has finally decided that this is going to be the nastiest Presidential election in a century (at least) and that running Barak Obama will bring out every Republican racist rat in the woodwork. Tell me something I didn't know before I voted for Obama.

The question is not which candidate will face the nastiest campaign. The Repubs are going to lose more House and Senate seats, but they think that, using normal Republican nastiness, they can save the Presidency with the doddering fool McCain. They have no attractive platform, they don't like any of their choices as candidate, but they still want to keep the Presidency and they are going to go all out to do it.

The difference between Obama and Clinton is just the particular form the attacks take. But here in Texas, Obama can bring out the Democratic vote. Clinton can't, but she can bring out the Republican vote. And Hillary's advisers are the worst of the Clinton bunch. They have almost as little interest in making the big changes America needs as the Republicans do. Clinton and her crew want to change the party in the White House. Obama wants to change America.

Electability? Hell, the only real difference in the attacks is we know that it will be more racist stuff like Rev. Wright's statements, while Hillary will be defending Bill. I'll defend an ex-Marine Reverend who tells people that this remains a racist nation (right after 9/11) over a triangulating DLC Philandering draft-dodger any day.

Then there is the little detail that Obams has more delegates.

You know, Kerry very likely won. R.F. Kennedy Jr. hammerd it home it pretty convincingly in his Rolling Stone article and then there were the exit polls. Remeber them? Never, we were told, NEVER had there ever been such a discrepancy between the exit polls and the real results. Hmmmm. But besides al that, there's an enormous difference between Kerry and Obama. I mean, I voted for Kerry and think he's a decent man as far as politicians go. But Obama's ahole different ball of wax. He's becoming beloved. That's the word that comes to my mind, and I think it's arguably true.

Then she herself should stand up and say so instead of on phone calls with Super Delegates. If that is her opinion, she may be right; but she needs to stand up and say so publicly.

The Republicans I know in North Carolina are licking their chops to get Hilary as a candidate. They can't wait to see her painted as a lesbian, with every female associate she ever had under suspicion going back to college days and maybe before. Every woman with a Hilary bumper sticker will be called a lesbian, too. They'll say any association with the women's movement is an open and shut case of lesbianism.

The Republicans will also say Obama is a black radical, a Muslim and a terrorist, and that he had sex with a young white girl, and that he smuggled explosives to the weathermen, and on and on.

So what? We know what the Republicans do. There is no reason to let the Republicans choose the Democratic nominee. No Democrat will silence the attack machine. If the first round of charges they hurl against the Democratic nominee don't stick, they'll just keep escalating the lies. Democrats should attack the attack machine, not bow down to it. Identify the slimy operatives who do the dirty work. Call out the financiers. Turn the Democratic attack machine on them.

God, Ickes is disgusting. We have to choose Hilary because otherwise the big bad Republicans will get us. Funny how everything he says ends in our being forced--forced--to vote for Hilary.

Yet all the polls show that Wright didn't have that effect on how the American people trust Obama to unite the country.

Wright IS NOT EQUAL TO Obama
They are separate people.

Yeah, I know, it seems like the only elephant in the room that can be mentioned is the black one. It makes me want to scream and I'm white.

The thing is adamachaz..white folks aren't SCARED of stupidcrazyassholes that are WHITE. They are only scared of BLACK ones, they fear blacks.

Obama told us his own grandmother, much as she loved him, confided in him that she too feared black males when they passed her on the street.

GOT IT?! RACIAL FEARS are winning politics.

White folks want to claim that Obama was throwing his grandmother under the bus, because he had said what she voiced but in doing so he was really telling them he KNEW they TOO FEARED HIM. Just like his grandmother who loved him. But they did not hear that. They just heard their racism expressed publically without malice or hate by Obama and they did not know what to make of it. It was white folks dirty laundry being aired by a black man who had sat at their dinner tables and KNEW. He was not some angry 'get whitey' black person. He was someone who loved them as white was the only face of love he knew as a child.

The part of the message whites didn't hear was that Obama said his grandmother was NOT racist but just a 'typical white person'. He said that first. All white folks repeat is the 'typical white person' part of his answer. When what Obama said was that DESPITE THEIR FEAR of HIM as a BLACK MALE he does NOT beleive they are racist. Thanks to his grandmother, you see.

To Obama, whites fear of blacks, was all bundled in a core of a whole lot of love and expressed from faces that loved him dearly. Obam a does not beleive whites have animus or hostility when they respond to their racial fears. He said that also.

Obama said that whites are products and victims of the images and experiences of the times they were raised in. But white folks didn't hear that. They only heard him tell the unvarnished truth about their RACIST core. White people don't believe that blacks can still embrace them despite the racism they harbor. Even though that is PRECISELY what Obama told them. Obama told them it was generational.

Instead Billary and Limbaugh twist it into Obama harboring 'black militant' views like his preacher. You know why? Because that is how WHITES would respond if the shoe was on the other foot, you see. Whites have no trust and whites have no faith. They do not have Christian hearts. Just look at the hate Pat Buchanan spews. Black folks have a strong chrisitan faith despite the CENTURIES of hate. Black Americans endure all the anger, hostility and hate and STILL turn the other check. Which is EXACTLY what Wright said in his sermon. That was the message of the sermon they play THIRTY SECONDS of over and over that no one ever bothers to listen to in it's entirety. Wright concludes that Jesus teaches us to love our enemies. White folks do not BELIEVE that because deep down they resent and hate blacks, as our predominately white society allows them that luxury. Blacks have no such luxury and the only place blacks get to express their anger in a HEALTHY PRODUCTIVE way IS in church. Church provides the outlet to VENT the emotions that will get you killed and have you living in misery every day of your American life unless you learn to have a STRONG christian faith and LOVE your enemy.

White folks didn't hear that though. They are too frighten by Wrights fire and brimstone to listen to the core message of love thy enemies that Wright delivered in his God damn America speech. Racial fears keep them from hearing the truth just as those racial fears keep them from voting their hopes.

The Southern Strategy has NEVER failed in American politics.

Thus, ICKES is bringing up Wright to the superdelegates..he too knows that it is whites racial fears that will make them vote against Obama. The vast majority of SD's are white and they will rationalize and come up with the justification for it. They will LIE and say it wasn't RACE. Just yesterday, Cuomo was out on CNN floating the trial balloon of both candidates agreeing to accept VP if they are not the nominee. That is nothing but bait for the racist trap they are laying for Obama. Once he agrees to anything that allows them to save face he will be toast as the nominee. BURNT toast. (pun intended).

We need to stop pussyfootin and get serious. This nomination is going to boil down to RACE. No matter what they say.

That IS what it is, race. Billary knows that too, which is why they are pushing the WRight angle and NOTHING else.

Now that Ickes has said it, I wonder if folks will start believing and stop thinking I am some addled brained fruitcake peddling some leftwingvastconspiracy.

It ain't nothing leftwinged about it. Racism is ALL-AMERICAN just like apple pie and the red white and blue.

It is how we RESPOND that can change this country.

This is our defining moment. It is the fierce urgency of NOW.

Are we going to vote our hopes or our fears?

America our moment is NOW.

Put an end to this and let's build a bridge to the 21st century.

We can have a visionary leader or a re-tread back to the 20th century with Billary.

Don't let race suck us back down. We can move forward.

YES WE CAN.

Find out who the superdelegates are and wage a phone campaign with them just like ICKES and Billary are.

We have to COUNTER that FEAR with our HOPE.

Yes we CAN!

Yeah I hear ya. I've been struggling with my own feelings of outrage all day. HOW can I vote for this woman now (in the very unlikely event that she is the nominee). I've got the radio on reading through TPM and the announcer was railing against the "Ill vote for McCain" threats he's been hearing which he attributed mostly, but not solely, to Clinton supporters. He then did a rant on war, and his sons being up for draft during a McCain reign, and his words were so forceful it bought tears to my eyes. I have sons. And we all know that the bulk of people that get sent off to fight these resource-wars are people of color, poor people of all colors etc. So I get the rage I really do. If Clinton pulled off a win with this shit I'll be gutted, DEVASTATED. But I'm going to vote against more war. I have to.

None of that compares to what they would do to Hillary "Parton Saint of Liars" Clinton.

And if Hillary gets the nom, the party of Rove will do the following:

Display images of John McCain from Vietnam, mixed with her BS about the sniper fire heroism in Bosnia.

They'll drag up the fact that she was fired after the Watergate investigation for her lies and unethical behavior.

They'll drag up MonicaGate, Whitewater, her lies about SCHIP, her lies about being named after Sir Edmund Hillary, her lies about NAFTA...need I go on?

And when they do that Otto what will you say?

Will you say it is wrong?

Will you say that you are not distracted?

Will you say 'not this time'?

I think we have had enough advice from cowards for one day.

This line of argument, which HRC supporters seem so devoted to, puts the lie to her candidacy.

What it says is that the Dems have to pick a candidate that reflects trumped-up GOP standards for supposed patriotism because otherwise, the big bad GOP will savage the poor weak Dems. And this from the candidate who says she's a "fighter." Is that how she'll fight in the White House? Can we look forward to: "We can't pull out of Iraq because then the GOP will say we 'cut and ran.'"

Her failure to stand up to the smearing of Wright (which also would have been a brilliant political move) and to instead join in it shows she's not a fighter. She's a capitulator. Like they did in the 1990s with her, the GOP will run the table and she will jump through whatever ridiculous hoops they choose to erect. (See, e.g., "I didn't inhale.")