"Lowlife tactics"

Mr. Obama’s campaign was always going to be difficult, and the climb is even steeper now. There is no reason to feel sorry for him. He’s a politician out of Chicago who must have known that campaigns often degenerate into demolition derbies.

Still, it’s legitimate to ask, given the destructive developments of the last few weeks, whether the Clintons are capable of being anything but divisive. The electorate seems more polarized now than it was just a few weeks ago, and the Clintons have seemed positively gleeful in that atmosphere.

It makes one wonder whether they have any understanding or regard for the corrosive long-term effects — on their party and the nation — of pitting people bitterly and unnecessarily against one another.

What kind of people are the Clintons? What role will Bill Clinton play in a new Clinton White House? Can they look beyond winning to a wounded nation’s need for healing and unifying?

These are questions that need to be answered. Stay tuned.

Bob Herbert echoes the fear about the Clintons that many of us have felt lately.  They almost seem as though they're trying to out-Rove Rove.  And many of their supporters, along with the worst of the anonymous right online, seem to think the worst language of the wingnuts is okay.  Take this comment, for example, which Herbert found in a blog:

“omg people get a grip. Can you imagine calling our president barak hussien obama ... I cant, I pray no one would be disrespectful enough to put this man in our whitehouse.”

Please.  Not another four to eight years of that!

Colbert King, writing in the Washington Post and a little angrier than Herbert, hammers home some truths about the Clintons.  For example:

Who would have thought, eight years ago, that the country might get back Billary, two people reeking of self-pity and spoiling for fights with anyone who has the temerity to stand in their way?

As with the Queen in "Alice," it's all about them. Witness their attempts to devalue Obama.

But don't point that out to the Clintons. They are always right and see no reason to apologize or take back anything they have said or done. And, as we have seen, Billary will say and do anything to come out ahead.

Item: Hillary's claim to "35 years of experience." Subtract her years spent as first lady of Arkansas and in the White House, and her time working as a lawyer in the Rose Law Firm and in other jobs. As Reason Magazine's Steve Chapman reported in November, Hillary Clinton has "just under eight years of experience in elective office -- one more than John Edwards and four fewer than Obama." And, to boot, Hillary the Feminist has her man to fight her battles.

Item: Bill Clinton's jab at Obama's lack of experience. To elect Obama would be to "roll the dice," sniffed the former president. When Bill Clinton ran for president in 1992, he was governor of a small state, had no foreign policy experience and didn't know how to salute. He got his on-the-job experience in the White House.

Touché! 

What about South Carolina? A Clinton win would be no surprise.  There's just something about how our elections have been turning out for the past decade...  We need to remember to factor in the what-the-heck outcomes which defy so many polls.