Another Maureen Dowd Hillary Smackdown

Marueen Dowd chastises Team Obama for letting the Clintons getting away with murder at the convention, including adding language in the platform that blames Hillary's loss on sexism, thus dampening the "dreams of our daughters." MoDo says the plank should have state this:

A woman who wildly mismanages and bankrupts a quarter-of-a-billion-dollar
campaign operation, and then blames sexism in society, will dampen the dreams of
our daughters.

The rest of the column is equally genteel.

Meanwhile, let's hope Barry comes back from Hawaii recharged and ready tobe more the candidate he was this winter.

The Clintons and the Gays

Andrew Sullivan has been posting a small series on this topic. Two things I'll direct your attention to. First, Sullivan's personal experience when fighting DOMA:

My most vivid memory was testifying against the Defense Of Marriage Act in 1996. It was the day of the hearings. We were going to lose; we always knew it. But the Clintons told the press on the morning of the hearings that they didn't believe there were any constitutional problems with DOMA, cutting us off at the knees. Yes, that was politics. I understand. All I want to remind the next generation of gays about is: don't ever expect anything more than "just politics" from the Clintons.

And if you think the Clintons "had" to do it because of the Republican-controlled Congress, I urge you to read the account posted by John Aravosis on AmericaBlog regarding Bill Clinton's advice to John Kerry to support anti-gay marriage state initiatives in 2004.

And remember...the same people that were advising him then are advising her now.

The Clinton Roundup

Here's what some people have been saying about the Clintons in the past few days. And these are Democrats.

Let's start with Robert Reich, Bill Clinton's former labor secretary:

I write this more out of sadness than anger. Bill Clinton’s ill-tempered and ill-founded attacks on Barack Obama are doing no credit to the former President, his legacy, or his wife’s campaign. Nor are they helping the Democratic party. While it may be that all is fair in love, war, and politics, it’s not fair – indeed, it’s demeaning – for a former President to say things that are patently untrue (such as Obama’s anti-war position is a “fairy tale”) or to insinuate that Obama is injecting race into the race when the former President is himself doing it

Colbert King:

Item: Billary loves to whine about the "politics of personal destruction." But Billary's campaign has taken to the low road, running ads falsely accusing Obama of supporting federal deficits and private Social Security accounts, and distorting his position on hot-button issues such as abortion. Newark Mayor Corey Booker, who branded the attacks "outrageous" and "dishonest," told Newsweek's Jonathan Alter: "We're trying to offer an alternative to the Republicans' fear and smear campaigns, and now we're being dragged down to their level by the Clintons."

William Greider

The recent roughing-up of Barack Obama was in the trademark style of the Clinton years in the White House. High-minded and self-important on the surface, smarmily duplicitous underneath, meanwhile jabbing hard to the groin area. They are a slippery pair and come as a package. The nation is at fair risk of getting them back in the White House for four more years. The thought makes me queasy....

...The [Clinton] style is very familiar to official Washington, not just among the Clintons' partisan adversaries, but among their supporters. The man lied to his friends. All the time. They got used to it. They came to expect it. I observe a good many old hands among the Senate Democrats are getting behind Obama. It would be good to know more about why they declined to make the more obvious choice of endorsing the power couple.