The other thing that is odd about this tactic is it practically requires the media and the netroots to investigate her own religious ties and look for controversy to bring back to her for renouncing and rejecting. Since we already have a sense that there is something there with her connection to The Family, it is very strange almost Gary Hart-ish of her to directly make this an issue.

Can't agree with you, Ron. I think the media will generally be very, very leery of being seen as attacking conservative prayer groups, regardless of how much power said prayer group might have amassed. Attacking Wright is fine, because he's a scary black man. Attacking Sam Brownback on religion? That doesn't earn the media any points from conservatives.

If Clinton really is insistent on burning down the house(so to speak), I can't tell you how happy would I be to see Russ Feingold nominated at the convention. Just think of how many people in the blogostan world would work for his campaign.

Democratic nomination = Survivor

beat me to it, mightygodking:

I wouldn't expect the MSM to do any reporting on "The Family" anytime soon.

If you delete the second paragraph and the first sentence of the third, this post becomes roughly 100x better.

The timing of this attack is ridiculous. The Wright story went through a couple of weeks of intense vetting. Presumably, the vast majority have decided whatever they will and moved on.

Hillary's Wright is too late to be sleazy and is just lame. Hillary's problem with the sniper story is that it wasn't just a lie misstatement, but a hilarious one. People remember a great joke.

Meaning, the first clause of the third.

"Some of them empires"? For a second there I thought I was reading Yglesias.

Ezra, what sport are you using for your analogy? It sounds like Calvinball!

Let's assume Hillary actually, you know, controls and manages her campaign as 'the candidate'.

Surely her actions since OH/TX bring to the fore her capacity to really be 'an executive' in charge of the whole fucking US government. Her campaign is a JOKE! (Actually makes BushCo look half competent - lol).

So yesterday she meets with a Pittsburgh trash-newspaper's editorial board, with Scaife sitting at the head of the table - the same guy that paid for 'the vast right wing conspiracy' in the Clinton presidential years. Is she NUTS? Totally WACKO?

Dangerous objects should not be in the hands of children, and the Dem. party must now cut her off at the knees, take away her verbal weapons of mass destruction, and send her to the nunnery.

Your analogy sucks. Football IS decided by points, not judges. You talk about fans and stadium financiers as being critical. The Cleveland Browns have some of the most loyal fan support and still lose, so fans don't matter. The Houston Texans have huge corporate funding for the naming of their stadium and they lose, so that doesn't matter either.

"Dangerous objects should not be in the hands of children, and the Dem. party must now cut her off at the knees, take away her verbal weapons of mass destruction, and send her to the nunnery."

LOL at the number of metaphors alone

I'm with ya, except on the analogy.

How about Clinton is campaigning like a boxer in an ice dancing competition?

The other thing to say about this strategy is that it's just plain unethical.

Maybe a Smash Bros. analogy would have worked out better for you.

"Dangerous objects should not be in the hands of children,.."

Yep, that's why I won't be voting for either Democrat in the Fall.

Have you ever even watched a football game? Because you might know something about politics, but it sounds like you don't know the first thing about football.

Sports analogies are always bad, but Ezra has somehow figured out a way to make the worse. I thought Ezra couldn't embarass himself any more than he did after he popped wood after the Obamessiah's Iowa victory speech, but he has outdone himself. He has shown himself to know exactly as much about football as you would expect a man named "Ezra Klein" to know. It's a miracle that his analogy didn't have the Seattle Seagulls playing the Montreal Expos at Lambert Field with Brit Faver at starting pitcher. Bravo.

Mr Klein,
EVERY football game is decided on points (except the rare tie game).

Next time stick to "manly" analogies you're more familiar with like engine repair and hunting:

"... just like when the piston ring rubs against the muffler bearing too hard, allowing excess carbon dioxide to escape through the headlight gasket."

"... much as I would go out with my trusty 12-gauge double-barrel, crawl around on my stomach. I track and move and decoy and play games and try to outsmart them. You know, you kind of play the wind. That's hunting."

I'm going to read you all the time now. The doctors say a good belly laugh
is good for one's health. And you, my friend, are a hoot and a half.

Ben Murphy

If you're going to use a sports metaphor, it's gotta be rhythmics!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Viu7U8_IhD4

I've got a better analogy: Obama's explosive candidacy is like when a second-rate liberal rag hires a goofy-looking book-smart doofus with a weird name who gets paid to poop out blog posts that are long on pretty words but short on substance. Ezra, you write worse than Amanda Marcotte, and she can't write her way out of a paper bag. How you are not unemployed and out on the street, eating your own foot for dinner escapes me.

The media may not cover the Fellowship, but that doesn't change the fact that Hillary Clinton belongs to a an organization that says that the wealthy elite are chosen by god to rule over the stupid little plebs.

So much for her being the candidate of the downtrodden. I laugh at the morons who bought into that bull shit, god knows they should have known better.

Here's a better sports analogy:

It's the fourth quarter in a Final Four basketball game, and there are about 2 minutes on the clock. Team Clinton is down 10 points. The game is close, but the lead looks pretty solid.

Team Clinton decides to start taking out players on the other side through hard fouls. The plan is that, while the other team will still take foul shots, they'll lose their best players to injury.

So, they can make the score closer, and even if they lose in the end, they'll argue that their team was the better one on the floor at the end of the game, and the only one that has a shot in the championship, and so by rights should be awarded the W.

It doesn't make any sense, but that's what their plan seems to be.

I'm only 75% sure that Obama will be the nominee -- but I am 100% sure that Clinton will *not* be the nominee. Her only pathway to victory is cheating and destruction -- and I think there are too many people interested in the overall interest of Democrats to permit that to happen.

Come on everyone, it's time for the Ezra Klein Awful Sports Analogy Championship! I'll start: Hillary Clinton's graceless fall from favor in the Democratic party is like when a snowboarder falls down, then blames the Secret Service agent next to him and calls him an a-hole.

Judges? In football? Empires? You mean umpires? What a ridiculous analogy. Also, for future grammatical precision, check out your usage of "than" versus "then". I thought it was perhaps a typo, but then you used it twice, not to mention beginning sentences with And and But. How did you get your job?

Oh man, there is fascist octopus singing its swan song all over this post.

But the larger point is 100% correct. It really is starting to feel like she's not playing to win in 2008; she's playing to win in 2012 on buyer's remorse after we've nominated the other guy and President McCain has screwed things up for four years. Of course, the McCain administration would never have come to pass if she hadn't bashed the shit out of the eventual nominee in the first place.

I read a commenter the other day suggesting it was fine for her to press on as long as possible to get better policies out of Obama, since it's her right to run. I agree. But that's not what's happening. The policy debate is over; they've basically settled where they'll be. She's not pulling him her direction; she's just damaging the guy who's going to win. And it's crossed from rough-but-useful into a spiteful takedown. Her right to run does exist, but what the hell is she accomplishing at this point?

Jake, Final Four basketball games don't have quarters.

Ezra,

This Obama is God, Clinton is the devil dribble is making you look like a socially insolated courtier.

Dude, ease up, you are starting to sound like one of those Viet Nam "veterens" who were never there.

From an earlier post:

"...To those thinking I am a Hillary supporter, you are wrong, I dislike the Clintons for EXACTLY the same reasons I dislike the politics of Barak Obama [Yes, Barak gives great speech, but then too, most of history's evil doers had that talent]. Additionally, both are vapid self serving souls who have never shown a trace of moral courage and as the campaign continues, each are showing themselves to be back stabbers extraordinaire. The fact that each has repeatedly accused the other of behavior that they themselves are clearly engaging in seems to have escaped concern of the blogging generation. Better to support your guy than to be truthful?

...the Democratic elite attacking Hillary/Barak were being useful Republican tools...but hey, don't take my word on it, The Village Voice lays it out in...."

Hillary and the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy
The strange case of conservative pundits and their love for Barack Obama
by Wayne Barrett
March 11th, 2008 12:00 AM

http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0811,374100,374100,2.html/full

The prime movers of both political parties have long tried to game the presidential nominating process—not only to choose their eventual winner, but also to pick their November opponent. And in this landmark election without incumbents, the media wing of the Republican Party, in particular, has quite visibly been playing that game. Right-leaning pundits for months now have very openly not just called for Hillary Clinton's head, but also coddled and promoted Barack Obama, salivating over the prospect of facing him in November.

Meanwhile, voters have been echoing that program: Barack Obama has been beating Hillary Clinton in part because Republicans are helping him.

Sixteen of the 45 Democratic primaries and caucuses held before this week were open affairs, allowing Republicans and independents to take part, and Barack Obama has won 11 of those contests. He almost invariably carried the Republican vote, which accounted for as much as 9 percent of the total in Wisconsin and Texas, and frequently ran even stronger among independents, who represented a fifth or more of Democratic primary voters in state after state. The 75 percent of the Republican vote that he won in Missouri, for example, may have pushed him over the top, and certainly, when combined with his 67 percent of the state's much larger independent vote, it delivered many of the district-apportioned delegates to him. Republicans in Obama states like Washington, Wisconsin, and Virginia were even freer to cross the aisle, since by the time they voted, John McCain had already sewn up the GOP nomination. While Obama often won some of these states so handily that Republicans and independents could not have provided his margin of victory, there is no way to know how many delegates in close congressional-district contests will wind up in Denver because of the impact of Republican or independent voters. And there is no exit-poll data to measure their impact on the caucuses.

Nor can the exit data reveal the motive for so many crossovers. These voters may have been attracted by Obama's message of transcending politics as usual, or they may simply have been trying to tilt the scales to help nominate the candidate they believe Republicans can most easily beat. In the lead-up to Texas and Ohio, Rush Limbaugh, whose radio show reaches 13 million, dropped his "mafia wife," "Nurse Ratched," and "testicle lockbox" descriptions of Hillary Clinton long enough to urge his listeners to vote for her "if they can stomach it." His rationale was to keep the bloodbath going. Up to then, he was unabashedly boosting Obama with the same perverse purpose. Obama still carried most of the 252,000 Republicans who voted in Texas—a Limbaugh stronghold—but his percentage dropped from 72 percent in Wisconsin to 52 percent.

Limbaugh is one of the opinion makers on the right who made little secret of his early preference for Obama. Conservative pundits slammed Hillary early and hard, exploiting every opportunity to widen the racial divide among Democrats. Though their party is so white that the networks have no ethnic exit-poll data to analyze, these reliable partisans have expressed shock at a number of supposedly race-baiting Clinton comments, with the New York Post's top campaign columnist even calling Bill and Hillary "modern-day George Wallaces, standing in the White House door."

Once Obama became the apparent nominee, especially after the Wisconsin primary on February 19, these same pundits began turning on him (though, it has now become clear, perhaps a bit prematurely). As often as some of them have declared that Clinton is the most beatable Democrat, their own agenda suggested otherwise. George Will may have inadvertently tipped this card when he wrote after Obama prospered on Super Tuesday: "The Republican Party's not-so-secret weapon always is the Democratic Party, with its entertaining thirst for living dangerously." It is possible, of course, that their hatred of the Clintons was all that drove these right-wing pundits in their early targeting of Hillary, but it's more likely that they were collectively so confident of beating the black guy in November that they became his unofficial advance team.

Since few Democratic voters—theoretically—should be affected by anything this cabal has to say, its impact on the nominating process has been, at best, indirect. But the right's talkers have helped to shape the way the election is covered. And even if they've only affected the margins, it's precisely those margins—in states like Missouri, or in district delegate fights, or in the narrowing popular-vote contest—that matter. Perhaps the more important point for Democrats is why these drum beaters have been so universally on the same beat

How about a poker analogy? After super tuesday, Obama had three pair at the plop, and was on a flash draw, but he decided to hit, because he figured that all that Hillary could do is say "go fish," and he could counter with "Jumanji."

To Dem party leaders: please put her (and us) out of this misery

"The policy debate is over; they've basically settled where they'll be. She's not pulling him her direction; she's just damaging the guy who's going to win. And it's crossed from rough-but-useful into a spiteful takedown. Her right to run does exist, but what the hell is she accomplishing at this point?"

I'd argue that perhaps Obama could have tweaked his policies some (gone universal on health care, e.g.) if he'd wanted to gain more votes from working class Americans; he might have prevailed in OH if he had...AND he could still improve his numbers in PA and win this thing if he'd stay clear of the negative attacks.

The "Hillary should quit now" argument is made entirely out of bad faith, and it’s easy to prove. If indeed she can’t win, whether or not she quits is irrelevant, just as it was irrelevant whether Mike Gravel quit or not. If she can win, then telling her to quit is stupid and insulting…not to her, but to those who support her. There’s no third possibility.

Since everyone else has already pointed out how inept the football metaphor
was, I won't rub it in further.

The analogy you really wanted comes from boxing, not football. A boxing
match can be won on points awarded by the judges, or it can be won by knockout.

Obama is Muhammad Ali and Hillary Clinton is Joe Frazier. They're in the 13th
round of a 15 round fight. Ali/Obama is ahead on points, so all he wants to do is make it to the final bell. He's going to dance around, flicking an occasional jab, avoiding any big mistakes. If he can do that, he wins.

Frazier/Clinton knows it's probably too late to erase the point deficit by
playing it safe. If CLinton/Frazier is to win, it's going to be by knockout. So,
Clinton/Frazier has to start throwing hard, wild blows and hope that one of them
puts Ali/Obama down for the count.

The pathetic attempts by Sen. Clinton to destroy Sen. Obama are sickening. Her campaign staff ran a lousy operation, assuming she would have the nomination wrapped up by Feb. 5, then had no game plan aside from destroying a fellow Democrat.

She would rather destroy the party --and make no mistake about what will happen if some sleight of hand parliamentary maneuver snares her the nomination-- than gracefully accept that she cannot win.

Obama is the future. Clinton is the past. Just look at who has energized the electorate and brought millions of new Democratic voters into the fold. Hint: it isn't her.

I'm ashamed of Sen. Clinton. Yeah, I'll vote for her if she gets the nod because I don't want to see any more Scalias on the Supreme Court, but I will never, ever respect her and our party will be the weaker for having nominated her.

I find Sen. Clinton's attacks on Obama pertaining to the Wright controversy especially puzzling in light of the revelations of this piece:

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080331/ehrenreich

I agree Obama could have tweaked his policies, and I think maybe he should have. But he didn't. If his policies as they stand are unsatisfactory to you, okay, you look for a viable alternative. And there was one, and she was in it for a while, and she's still an alternative, but not a viable one. Of course if she could win, she should stay in the race and try to do so. But nearly every political circle has now reached the conclusion that she cannot.

So I ask why a non-viable candidate stays in the race. Perhaps it's to give voice to a particular policy issue or idea; over the last few weeks, she hasn't done that -- these attacks have not been about health care. Perhaps it's to position herself as a strong candidate going forward; given the "experience" meme of her campaign and the various elements of this race, such positioning is unnecessary and unlikely. Perhaps it's to keep the news cycle focused on Democrats in a good way; the narrative and the campaigns' contribution to it (both of them) has been too negative for this to be the case.

You're right; it's irrelevant whether Gravel quits or not, and if she conducted her campaign the same way (either quietly or coming off as crotchety and crazy), the same thing would be true. But she hasn't done so. Nor has she made it about policy. Instead, she's made it about: here are the ways in which Barack Obama is an unfit individual to serve as President. Now, if she really believes this to be the case, then she should never quit, but she should say it directly instead of working around the edges to weaken him. The latter is just undermining and weakening him against a far worse candidate on the other side; the former is an act of perceived good will toward the American people.

But she can't and won't do that because she wants to be the Democratic nominee. Whatever you think of the nomination process, the truth is that in that process, the majority of delegates have gone to Obama, indicating that Democratic primary voters do think he is fit to be the President. (She has received enough that it seems likely voters think the same about her; it's not an either-or case.)

So if she's staying in, and it's not for one of the reasons above, why is it? The only thing I'm seeing happen is an attempt to weaken Obama, but not in a way that will win her anything in 2008. The only person this really is helping in 2008 is John McCain. The criticisms she's offering aren't like the Edwards criticism from months ago that moved the debate; the way we know this is that you can't draw up an Obama policy platform that would answer the ones she's offered in recent weeks. Instead, to answer them, he'd have to switch churches, stop employing a bunch of supposed closet anti-Semites, etc. The attacks are personal, and they're counterproductive.

That's why she should leave. Gravel isn't hurting the nominee-to-be without helping himself in the process; she is doing exactly that, and it's not good for the party. It's not making the party more progressive, and it's not making it more likely to win. What's the point if it does neither of those things?

Personally, I have been in a church where hate speech (anti-gay) came from the pulpit, and made the choice to never go back there again. Despite my belief, at the time, that homosexuality was a sin. (I've changed my mind on that since then, by the way.)

So I think Sen. Clinton's response to a direct question was pretty much fair game.

On whether she should quit. Remember "The opera ain't over until the fat lady sings" or "Never give up, never surrender!" Don't we normally find that admirable?

Until Obama hits his magic number, it ain't over.

Great Point!

"The "Hillary should quit now" argument is made entirely out of bad faith, and it’s easy to prove. If indeed she can’t win, whether or not she quits is irrelevant, just as it was irrelevant whether Mike Gravel quit or not. If she can win, then telling her to quit is stupid and insulting…not to her, but to those who support her. There’s no third possibility."

Posted by: Thank You Rich in PA | March 26, 2008 11:47 AM

But it probably too logical to have any effect on the "Obama is God" crowd

Wow, worst sports analogy ever... if you want to talk judges, just stick with figure skating or rhythmic gymnastics, sports you are certainly more familiar with than football.

"...the majority of delegates have gone to Obama, indicating that Democratic primary voters do think he is fit to be the President."

The operative word there being "have."

Clinton supporters know that this "it's over" argument is nothing more than strategy; part of a stepped up series of soundbites designed to chip away at their endurance because PA is still a while off.

Clinton supporters know that if it were over, they'd know.

S Brennan, there's a third option. A candidate with strong minority support can poison the well for the eventual nominee. Even if the candidate can't win, he or she causes damage.

Clinton's current campaign is based on the view that Obama is unacceptable as the nominee. The argument is not that he's alright but she's better - it's that he's unacceptable. Given the odds of her winning - which are slim indeed - she should give some thought to what she is doing to the party's likely nominee.

I'll put it the way Phil Bredesen did. If the two of them beat each other up for the next five months, how are we going to resusciate their candidacies in the eight weeks of September and October? Do you really hate Obama that much that it's worth it to you?

Rev Wright is a gift that keeps on giving. Now he's taken to calling our Italian friends, and my wife is one, GARLIC NOSES.

Thanks Rev, Barack just lost her vote with that one.

So, in the world of metaphor, the game will not be decided on points. But in the world of direct language, she missed a chance to "score points" with the judges. Instead of doing that, she may "score a point" as she continues to fails to "score points" with the judges.
Back to English Composition, Ezra!

Drawing on a StarTrek meme ..

Team Obama, McPeak & Wright included, seem to be doing a pretty good job of having their starship "break apart" with or without the help of the Clintons or American Spectator. It is becoming clearer and clearer that they forgot to recruit a "Scotty" (i.e miracle worker).

I'll give 'em a little time before they start chanting with Wright .. G-D G-D

What's more telling about the two stories haunting the Democratic candidates?

Rev. Wright says some egregious b.s., and because Obmama worships at his church, he's responsible?

Meanwhile, Clinton tells a fairy tale about her "dangerous" visit under enemy fire to Bosnia --four separate times-- which is proven conclusively to be a fabrication. She claims to be sleep deprived and that she "misspoke" but four times?

I'd say the latter episode is far more indicative of character than the former.

If the Clintonistas do succeed in thwarting the will of the voting public through parliamentary trickery, we'll be looking at another four years of scorched earth politics and legislative inertia.

The Clinton aftertaste cost a hugely deserving Al Gore the White House. Now it seems they may succeed in destroying Obama's historic bid.

It's always about them. Always. Their only loyalty is to themselves.

Clinton has been acting against her own long-term best interests from the word go in this campaign. I admit that I am pretty amazed by her self-destructiveness myself, but it really should not come as a surprise to anyone.

Have you ever even seen a football game?

Two players are in the backfield, waiting for the direct snap from the super delegate in the Center. Hillary expects the snap to go to her because her husband used to play football. Barack expects the snap to go to him because he will be able to explain to the onrushing defensive lineman how to live in harmony. The problem is those lineman read the taunts by Barack's agent of 23 years and they intend to spear him whether he gets the ball or not. But in the final irony one of the offensive lineman has decided not to block if Hillary gets the ball and one of the offensive lineman has decided not to block if Barack gets the ball.

Hut... Hut... Hut...

I think every superdelegate who is a member of Congress should be asked the same question that Clinton was and called upon to give a public answer. I want to see how many of them would publicly come out and say that they would continue to worship at their church if this Sunday their preacher gave a sermon encouraging people to say God Damn America and make outrageous claims about the Government giving people AIDS, and all the other things Wright said. Better yet why don't we have Wright hold a revival promising to give those sermons and invite all the Democratic members of Congress to attend,

The "Hillary should quit now" argument is made entirely out of bad faith, and it’s easy to prove. If indeed she can’t win, whether or not she quits is irrelevant, just as it was irrelevant whether Mike Gravel quit or not. If she can win, then telling her to quit is stupid and insulting…not to her, but to those who support her. There’s no third possibility.

Counter-factual 1: she wins the nomination, but the tactics she used to win it so damaged the reputations of her and the party that she loses in the fall.

Counter-factual 2: she wins the nomination, but the tactics she used so hurt the party that she reduced turnout and prevented the party from gaining seats in the House and Senate GOP obstruction and blue dog Democrats prevent the party from passing any meaningful legislation.

Counter-factual 3: she loses the nomination and the tactics she used so damaged Obama that he loses to McCain in the fall.

Counter-factual 4: she loses the nomination, and her tactics nullified Obama's coat-tail effect. GOP obstruction and blue dog Democrats prevent the party from passing any meaningful legislation.

Your right Andrew- on the other hand when the wonderful superdelegates give the nomination to Obama because his pastor was a hate filled anti american extremist, but they are all too afraid to stand up and condem such non sense, we are really going to be in a strong position. Every Democratic candidate for Congress or other elected superdelegate running for re-election will be asked what they would have done about the Wright situation and if you honestly think that them saying I would have stayed in that church and said nothing about this for 20 years will help them come November you are delusional. It is not Clinton's tactics that are going to drag down dems in November, but Obama extortion of the nomination by exploiting the race issue that will.

sorry, UA, Chuck Todd of MSNBO has already conceded the Rev. Wright issue takes any wind out of the Obama coat-tail sails.

As for your counter-factuals 1-3, they all assume Obama to be a delicate flower that can't take care of himself...not exactly reassuring and another reason Clinton should remain.