I want to stop posting about Hillary Clinton. . .

but her campaign keeps trying to paint Barack Obama as a Republican. They've compared his campaign tactics to Karl Rove's, and Paul Krugman insinuates that Obama is merely a Republican in Democratic clothing. The latest, from Clinton's spokesperson, Howard Wolfson:

I for one do not believe that imitating Ken Starr is not the way to win the Democratic primary.

Wow, really? Ken Starr? I understand the Clinton campaign has a lot of ground to make up in the delegate count, but a campaign willing to be this intellectually dishonest offends me.

Dear Paul Krugman

Hi, Paul Krugman, a word, please: Stop writing about the Democratic primary. Yes, yes, you support Clinton and think Obama would be a mistake. Fine. But when you write paragraphs like the following, it upsets me:

Now, nobody would mistake Mr. Obama for a Republican — although contrary to claims by both supporters and opponents, his voting record places him, with Senator Clinton, more or less in the center of the Democratic Party, rather than in its progressive wing.

See, you write for the New York Times, and despite the continued op-ed presence of Maureen Dowd, there are certain standards. You're smarter than this "Obama as Republican" meme, and the "more or less" shows it. You're fudging. And then you write this:

But Mr. Obama, instead of emphasizing the harm done by the other party’s rule, likes to blame both sides for our sorry political state.

So when Obama criticizes the Iraq war, the Bush tax cuts, or the shoddy state of health care, he's not criticizing Bush? Really? And, by the way, I think you know that the Democratic party has enabled Bush in a lot of ways. You're aware of this, right? Good, just checking.

That — along with his adoption of conservative talking points on the crucial issue of health care — is why Mr. Obama’s rise has caused such division among progressive activists, the very people one might have expected to be unified and energized by the prospect of finally ending the long era of Republican political dominance.

Now, you've been trying this one for a while, this "conservative talking points" angle. Would you mind being specific about those conservative talking points? Has Obama been calling Clinton's plan socialized medicine? Have I been missing that somewhere? In his votes (in both the Illinois and U.S. Senate) to spread affordable health-care coverage, has he been arguing against health care as foundational to a major world economy? Oh, he hasn't? Then I'm a little confused, I guess. But you do end on a good point:

All in all, the Democrats are in a place few expected a year ago. The 2008 campaign, it seems, will be waged on the basis of personality, not political philosophy.

You're right: the Clinton campaign signs that read "Hillary!"? Those are totally about political philosophy. Totally.

For more on this, go here.

Hillary Clinton's Bush desperation

A thought experiment: If you were to compare Barack Obama to famous American politicians, who would appear in the top ten? Or to approach this another way: How far down the list would George W. Bush appear?

I ask because, as the Ohio and Texas primaries move closer, Hillary Clinton has begun comparing Obama to, of all people, the current president. In a speech yesterday criticizing fliers Obama has been sending out for a little while, Clinton said, "Let's have a real campaign. Enough with the speeches and big rallies and then using tactics that are right out of Karl Rove's playbook." She went on to say that Bush campaigned on a platform of change--she specifically cited his "compassionate conservatism" and said, "He promised change, didn't he? The American people got shafted and we're going to have to make up for it."

While the fliers she's referring to fall somewhere between accurate and misleading, the fliers come nowhere close to Rovian, and she surely knows that. Politically, Obama leans no closer to Bush than Clinton herself, and in some instances, he's further left (to my mind, an absolute plus). But I think it's worth noting the desperation of this comparison, Obama as Bush.

As any sane person has, I've opposed Bush from the beginning, but I've also noticed over time how the mere mention of his name has become an easy in for speakers with left-leaning audiences. Cheap Bush jokes serve as ice breakers, no matter how weak the joke. After a while, that's gotten boring. (NB: I'm not against Bush jokes; I think he should be impeached. To borrow a line from Jerry Seinfeld, I'm offended as a comedian.)

Throughout the campaign, Clinton has referenced Bush and his misdeeds both because she's right that he's been a destructive force, possibly the worst president in history, and because criticizing Bush gets easy applause. So it's sad to hear Clinton trying to compare Obama to Bush. Paul Krugman, who I usually agree with, did the same thing in an embarrassing column a couple of weeks ago, writing, "I’m not the first to point out that the Obama campaign seems dangerously close to becoming a cult of personality. We’ve already had that from the Bush administration — remember Operation Flight Suit? We really don’t want to go there again." The utter ridiculousness of that comparison is reason enough for Krugman to be kept from writing about the campaign until after the primary.

For all of Obama's faults (full disclosure: I'll probably vote for him when my primary comes up), he's no Bush; he's no Rove. Clinton's dire need for primary victories has somehow led her to rhetoric that seems wildly desperate, nothing more than the shallowest attempt to pull in voters who may not know any better.