In case you want to get nostalgic about the 2008 Primary....

[Armstead]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/11/opinion/11krugman.html
"Hate Springs Eternal" by Paul Krugman

The bitterness of the fight for the Democratic nomination is, on the face of it, bizarre......Why, then, is there so much venom out there?

I won’t try for fake evenhandedness here: most of the venom I see is coming from supporters of Mr. Obama, who want their hero or nobody. 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.

What’s particularly saddening is the way many Obama supporters seem happy with the application of “Clinton rules” — the term a number of observers use for the way pundits and some news organizations treat any action or statement by the Clintons, no matter how innocuous, as proof of evil intent.

During the current campaign, Mrs. Clinton’s entirely reasonable remark that it took L.B.J.’s political courage and skills to bring Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream to fruition was cast as some kind of outrageous denigration of Dr. King.....

For now, Clinton rules are working in Mr. Obama’s favor. But his supporters should not take comfort in that fact.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1579618/Barack-Obama-criticised-over-cult-like-rallies.html

For many it is simply a sign of his charisma. But for a growing number of Barack Obama sceptics, there is something disturbing about the adulation with which the senator and Democratic presidential frontrunner is greeted as he campaigns for the White House - unnervingly akin to the hysteria of a cult, or the fervour of a religious revival.

Thousands wait in line to see him wherever he stops. Members of the audience have taken to rushing the stage during campaign rallies, forcing the public-address announcer to plead with them to back off. And when Mr Obama eventually takes the platform to rhythmic chants of his mantra-like slogan, "Yes we can, yes we can!" fans swoon with euphoria.

Now critics are quietly voicing the fear that Mr Obama and his campaign have deliberately adopted the tone and tactics of an evangelical preacher, whipping up "Obamamania" at the expense of more serious discussion of policy and government.

There is "something just a wee bit creepy about the mass messianism" deployed by the black senator and his supporters, observed Joe Klein, the veteran political commentator the first to latch on to the political potency of Bill Clinton, then an obscure Arkansas governor, early in the 1992 White House campaign.

"The message is becoming dangerously self-referential," he wrote in Time magazine. "The Obama campaign all too often is about how wonderful the Obama campaign is."

http://www.politico.com/story/2008/02/obamamania-verges-on-obsession-008605

Welcome to the cult of Barack Obama.
Many talented politicians attract devoted throngs — but with Obama, the fervency of his following borders on the messianic, and that phenomenon has only increased in recent weeks as Obama has scored 10 consecutive primary and caucus victories over New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, surged into the lead in the delegate count, and claimed the mantle of front-runner for the Democratic nomination.
But is there a downside to being viewed as a political deity?
Critics, including Clinton, Arizona Sen. John McCain and members of the Republican chattering class clearly think so.
A competing narrative has formed in recent weeks in which opponents try to turn Obama’s popularity into a negative by hinting that there’s something uninformed and empty — or just plain creepy — about his impassioned support.
For weeks, Clinton and her campaign have increasingly centered their critique of Obama on the notion that while he can wax poetic on the stump, she offers more experience and on-the-job training.
Last week, Clinton adviser Sid Blumenthal e-mailed an article from The American Conservative implying that Obama's support was, at least in part, due to white liberal guilt.
"It's time to get real about how we actually win this election," Clinton said Wednesday at Hunter College in New York.
“It's time that we move from good words to good works, from sound bites to sound solutions.”
Her conclusion: “Let’s get real.”

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/02/14/clinton.obama/

At a campaign stop at a General Motors Corp. plant in Youngstown, Ohio, the senator from New York accused Obama of caving in to special interests.

"My opponent says that he'll take on the special interests," she said. "Well, he told people he stood up to the nuclear industry and passed a bill against them. But he actually let the nuclear industry water down his bill -- the bill never actually passed."

Clinton was referring to a 2006 bill that Obama drafted after an Illinois nuclear power plant was found to have released radiation into surrounding groundwater.

Obama's original bill would have required power plants to notify the public and government officials when any radiation was released, but subsequent versions had less stringent reporting requirements, The New York Times reported. The bill was never voted on by the full Senate.

Clinton also accused Obama of supporting "billions of dollars of breaks for the oil industry" by voting for an energy bill she opposed and said he did not support the workers of a Maytag Corp. plant that closed in his home state of Illinois. Video Watch Clinton attack Obama »

[Armstead]

1. kick

[PufPuf23]

2. kr

[brentspeak]

3. Some things never change.