These telling recent comments:

When King reminded Clinton, cuttingly, that she'd called for a president with "spine," Clinton promised to show "as much spine as we possibly can" in response to the political sensitivities around AIDS funding.

and, on single-payer health care...

"It is unfair to tell people we can do something politically when we don't have the votes to do it," she said.

Excellent post. As a non-Hillary supporter (bad feminist!) who is convinced that 2008 is-- or should be-- a watershed election for Dems, I'm frustrated by the sense that our party is nothing but a bland counterweight to GOP insanity, with only inclusiveness & superior administrative skills as bragging points. And if Clinton is elected, that's really all we can expect for the next four years; it'd be infinitely better than anything the GOP has to offer, of course, but won't give the country much to believe in either.

As opposed to whom Ezra?

Are you seriously arguing that Obama is a bold candidate who takes on the Right?

I take it this is an argument for Edwards.

It certainly can not be one for Obama.

Neither Tapped nor Sully offers any evidence for what they're talking about.

Hillary Clinton is risk averse and reeks of fear?

What crap.

Do you mean the Sullivan who endorsed Bush in 2000?

That Sullivan?

Do you mean the Sullivan who referred to Iraq as a "noble war" as well as "I never thought WMD was central to Bush's argument for invading Iraq"?

That Sullivan?

Do you mean the Sullivan who stated that, if he were in the British Parliment, he would vote to allow discrimination against gay couples adopting on the basis of religious beliefs?

That Sullivan?

Well, THAT Sullivan is the same guy who, while bouncing about his chair on natioinal TV, screamed that Clinton gave him "cooties".

THAT Sullivan's opinion really doesn't count for much.

Isn't the question whether his argument is convincing, not whether he's credible?

I don't know, Ezra. Obama seems the more risk-averse to me, by far (as the poster above noted). Recently in the debate he intimated that he might not even be for overturning the combat exclusion?! I think that being a politician makes you cautious. While Clinton certainly has plenty of _reasons_ to be more cautious than most, I don't think there's any evidence that she actually is.

Edwards, though, does stand out as non-cautious.

It's just lazy journalism to keep reporting this commonly held view that Hillary in particular is always careful, not taking risks, scripted, on message, et cetera.

The Republican smear machine being what it is, of course Democrats are like that. But Hillary no more than anyone else.

In this case Sullivan is like a man who beats his wife wondering and complaining about how skittish and shy she is as a result. Remember, Sullivan was the biggest and loudest voice pillorying her health care plan in TNR. Arguments he now admits were false.

His argument is not convincing precisely because he lacks credibility when it comes to Clinton.

That's what happens to credibility when you concede that you "just can't stand her" on national TV.

If it were anybody else, he would be all a-twitter and making his "Conservative of Doubt" argument on her behalf. But, she's Clinton and, as a result, we get a truckload of Sullivan's psycho-babble.

Further, his opinions as to her "ambition" and "fathomless narcissism" reeks of misogyny.

Sullivan, despite his academic credentials, knows as little about what goes on in someone elses head as he did about the meaning of the words "musroom cloud".

Clinton, along with every candidate should be challenged on substance. As for the psychoanalysis, Sullivan has especially proved himself to be unfit for the job.

I bow to none in my loathing for Sullivan's past behavior and stances, but here I think his conclusion matches mine. Clintonism (Bill's post-'94 as well as Hillary's) was essential to Dem survival in that decade; we were coming out of the Age of Reagan, and the country wasn't ready for a full-throated progressivism, any more than it would have been ready for Reagan in 1969.

But that was then, this was now. Much as, in 1980, George HW Bush was weak tea for conservatives who'd grudgingly accepted Nixon but now wanted to seize the moment and make real change in the government's direction, so too Hillary seems the rightward boundary of what Democrats can hope for after '08, when they ought to have substantial progressive majorities in both executive and legislative branches for the first time since LBJ, and hope to significantly reverse the last quarter century of creeping GOPerism.

My only quibble with Sullivan is, he's using all this to boost Obama, where I think Edwards is the way to go.

Sullivan is a Hillary-phobe. He's always harping on her and the Human Rights Campaign. Andy is such a clown. He worshipped Bush & Co., but beats up liberals for not being liberal enough.

But I have to agree. I'm totally with Obama -- let's let the 1960s finally die. Let's just move on. Besides, Hillary would sell you out in a second if she thought it'd bump her up half a point in the polls. And don't forget that $100,000 bribe she took back in Arkansas (either that, or she's the best commodities trader of all time).

"Hence the fact that she reeks of fear, of calculation, of focus groups, of triangulation."

Sullivan's strong sense of smell strikes again! It's funny. I want to agree with the gist of what he's saying -- I think Clinton has learned some unfortunate lessons from the difficulties she has faced. Some of them, like her belief in executive power, have nothing to do with "focus groups."

And, of course, the idea that the other major Dems (not to mention the incredibly clownish Republicans) are uncalculating and fearless and shun focus groups is ridiculous. Again, I may be on Somerby overload, but I don't think it's a good idea to let these kinds of characterizations pass without comment -- they are part of a narrative about her (and, by extension, about all Dems) that keeps getting promulgated by lazy (and/or worse) reporters and pundits.

What JoeChi said. The New Republic, while Sullivan edited it, made major contributions to the climate that Sullivan now says has made Clinton timid. So, Andy, how do you like now what you did then?

I think this is only half of the picture. Hillary's ideas are actually quite good, but she doesn't talk about them enough. It's confounding. Her SCHIP proposal got the ball rolling for the current expansion, though her plan is by far the best out there. Bush is actually bringing on the ideological debate and LOSING! Even though he is absolutely right in the sense that this is a huge step towards federally funded health care, she's winning because people are more interested in making sure poor kids(even though expansion plans particularly hers would make eligible many or even most US young people under 25)have access to a doctor than they are in Bush's ideological argument that government financed health care is bad. And, yet, not even a chirp from her. It's as though she is afraid to take credit for her progressivism. I don't need to turn the page on Hillary. In many ways, it is as though the rest of the ocuntry finally caught up with her. But she should be taking credit for her own ideas, particularly when she is winning the argument.

Hillary is far from the only Democrat that you can say this about. Both Biden and Feinstein have arguably been worse on drugs. What's galling about Hillary is that she's just about perfect on HIV/AIDS issues, has been a true champion and still will not simply say the right thing. The worst thing is that Bill Clinton could have won this battle in 1998 - but he didn't have control over Barry McCaffrey - the drug czar at the time who came out against it (as far as I can tell because he took it personal that Shalala got mixed up in what he thought should be his beat). HIV activists are sick of this and sick of having Bill talk about this as being one of the big mistakes of his Presidency (see comments at various International HIV conferences) only to have Hillary Clinton fail on completely winnable policy in exactly the same way. It's maddening. However, Sullivan's point (flawed messenger on any HIV issue that he is) is essentially right. She's gun shy on this (and other) issues that are winnable and it's because she's failed to reset her sights from the 90s.

For all of his past misdeeds in making Hillary who she is ('No Exit', anybody?) Sully seems to be right on this. Strangely, he doesn't mention the two big issues on which Hillary's PTSD manifest themselves -- health care reform and Iraq.

I agree with m. It's as if, being in the Senate, she's victim of the same disorder affecting the pundits. You know, the one where they think the positions held by the majority of Americans are 'far out', 'extreme', etc.. It's all the more poignant in her case, because the popular positions are the ones she fought for in '92-93. I think she has no idea how far left the country is moving. I may be over-optimistic, but I think '06 was the beginning of something big. So, I guess I agree with Sullivan's hypothesis, even if I feel he was a major part of the problem.
My personal favorite writing of his was a column in the Times magazine in the early 90s. He started out by saying that since his daily medication regimen was obscenely expensive, he was so grateful he had insurance. Then he spent the rest of the column explaining why not everyone else should have it. Andrew Sullivan: fically conservative, situationally liberal.

I don't know if Sullivan is right, or even if I understand Sullivan.

I have observed, though, that something that people like Sullivan have in common... the fact that their ideological observations are all over the board and are inconsistent, is that they don't care about ideology. Instead what they care about is results, or at the very least perception of doing and standing for something.

All of the recent articles on Hillary going back to her youth in college have focused on the fact that she wants to change the system from within. The people complaining about her are more the type who want to change the system from outside. It's a personality clash.

Not ideological.

Ezra, working at the Atlantic has moved you closer to Sullivan rhetorically and ideologically.

Stop it. Or at least proceed at your own risk. Sullivan is a self-serving blowhard whose greatest gift is in self promotion. Hardly the ideal template for your professional ascent.

And, yes, Ezra, Sullivan's credibility counts for a lot here. He has a well-known, well-documented case of Hillary agonistes.

Sullivan is ideological. His ideology is the promotion of Andrew Sullivan. He is nothing more than an empty suit with a grudge--or more precisely, a raft of grudges.

I don't want to guess about Sullivan's motives or Clinton's psychology, but whatever they are it seems clear that Clinton is a very cautious politician. Hardly any dispute about that.

The takeaway, as Armando says above, is not a point for Obama. He has the same cautious tendencies.

Edwards, on the other hand, is talking at least about real change.

Sullivan's credibility is not at issue here; no one is saying, "Accept this argument because Andrew Sullivan is making it."

If an argument is valid and cogent, it is valid and cogent regardless of who is making it. If it's not, it's not, regardless of who is making it.