Negativity

Negative campaigning has been around since there have been elections. (And by negative campaigning, I do not mean simply criticizing your opponent. It's perfectly legitimate to criticize your opponent's substantive positions on issues.)
Smears, innuendo and worse has enjoyed a heyday in the past coup,e of decades, however. Some call it Clintonian. Some call it Rovian. Many blame the late Lee Atwater. It's had many fathers and many practitioners and the fact is that it has worked.
But like every marketing technique, it appears to have a shelf-life. And it appears it has expired. Those politicians running the most positive campaigns (Obama, Huckabee and McCain) have done the best. Some running campaigns relying on more negative techniques (Clinton, Romney) have faded.
Being positive is not a guarantee of success, of course. Otherwise Dodd and Biden would have done better. But the media and the public seem to have much less patience for crap like the Obama in Somali garb photo flap. (And is it embarrassing or what that a U.S. Congresswoman could be so ill-informed as to believe that this was Obama in the dress of his "native " country? Geesh! Get a clue, Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones! Obama is U.S. born!)
Tonight Hillary will be tempted to go negative on Obama. Good luck on that. If she sticks to substantive criticism, good for her. But if she goes off into silliness expect her campaign to finally collapse.

Clinton missing the vote

Evidently Hillary is too busyt trying to save her campaign to bother voting on the FISA immunity bills today.
Obama is there, joining Dodd and most of the Democrats trying to stop this bad policy. Of course, 18 Democrats and all the Republicans continue to conspire in the emasculation of their "co-equal" branch of government by legalizing whatever illegal things the executive branch does.
Law and order only applies to the little people, don't you know?
So now the battle turns to the House.

Filibustering for the Rule of Law

As Glenn Greenwald explains: http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/
Democrat Loser-in-Chief Harry Reid, who hasn't found it necessary to force the GOP to actually filibuster a single thing during his reign, merely let then threaten to do so, in order to kill legislation, is planning to make Chris Dodd conduct an actual talk-til-you-drop filibuster to stop the telecom immunity bill.
Well, as unfair as it is, there is silver lining to all this, because it may cause the issue to get a real public airing. The media would like nothing more than a dramatic filibuster the like of which hasn't been seen in years. There'll be scope for all sorts of stories, CNN live updates and hours and hours of airtime. They were gearing up last time for it but Reid headed it off by delaying
action on the issue until this year.
Evidently Reid, who has no principles himself, can't recognize them in other people and he calculated that Dodd was merely grandstanding for campaign purposes when he announced his filibuster plans. Reid assumed Dodd would drop it once his campaign was over.
Of course Dodd does, actually, appear to have a principled stand on this issue.
What the political hacks who pass for "leaders" these days don't understand is that ordinary people will respect someone with principles, even if they don't agree with them. Two of the most respected presidential candidates are Obama and McCain, who are respected by many who disagree on their policy positions. Meanwhile, the two most disrespected candidates -- Romney and the Clintons, barely have the respect of some people who agree with them and no respect at all from those opposed to their policies.