A Truly Wonderful Fox News Moment
(October 5, 2007 -- 1:46 PM EDT // link // )

You won't be surprised to hear that Fox News cherry-picked from its own poll to portray Democrats as unpatriotic, but this latest one is so comically dishonest that I feel truly privileged -- overjoyed, even -- to be the one sharing it with you.

Fox News is now running with a story that says this:

FOX News Poll: Nearly 1 in 5 Democrats Say World Will Be Better Off if U.S. Loses War

NEW YORK — Nearly one out of every five Democrats thinks the world will be better off if America loses the war in Iraq, according to the FOX News Opinion Dynamics Poll released Thursday.

The percentage of Democrats (19 percent) who believe that is nearly four times the number of Republicans (5 percent) who gave the same answer.

PowerLine and a phalanx of other wingnut bloggers are linking to the poll as proof that Dems are unpatriotic. This is buffoonish enough to begin with. But let's put that aside for a sec.

Turns out that if you dig into the guts of the actual poll, you find another interesting number. The survey also asked people whether they've ever prayed for the troops in Iraq. The poll's finding? Eighty-four percent of Dems said they had.

Needless to say, that number wasn't in Fox's story on the poll. But it gets better. Fox's story included a partisan breakdown of the answers to every question in the poll except that one.

You can literally picture the author of the Fox story working through the poll, coming to the number showing that virtually all Democrats reported praying for the troops, and saying: "Whoops, better not include that!" Really, the desperation here is just palpable.

Update: TPM Reader V emails in a nice catch from the poll: More Dems than Republicans have prayed for the Iraq War to end.

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CNN's Kitty Pilgrim: Republicans Still "In Control Of The Senate"
(October 5, 2007 -- 9:49 AM EDT // link // )

CNN's Kitty Pilgrim, subbing for Lou Dobbs last night:

Pilgrim:

In another setback for the GOP, Senator Pete Domenici tonight is announcing his retirement. Senator Domenici will step down next year for health reasons. His retirement could make it harder for Republicans to stay in control of the Senate.

You know, lots of pundits predicted that Dems would squander their majority, but I don't think anyone could have foreseen that it would happen this fast.

Special thanks to TPM Reader CS for sending this one in.

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NRCC Raising Money Off Rush's "Phony Soldiers" Remark
(October 4, 2007 -- 6:01 PM EDT // link // )

Here's an amusing postscript to the whole Rush Limbaugh flap: Far from conceding that there's anything wrong with Rush's remark that troops who don't agree with Bush are "phony soldiers," Republicans in D.C. are now raising money off of Rush's sliming of antiwar troops.

The National Republican Congressional Committee has just sent out a blast email to supporters asking them to sign a petition protesting the Dem persecution of Rush. At the top of the email is a link back to the NRCC's donations page where you can contribute money. The petition -- sent our way by a D.C. pal -- was written by GOP Rep. Eric Cantor, a leading Rush defender. It says, in part:

It is at moments like these when we need to band together as conservatives and fight back.

This issue is bigger than you or me, it is bigger than Rush Limbaugh. With the recent liberal effort to resurrect the "fairness doctrine," we have to recognize that free speech -- conservative free speech is under direct attack. These are issues that speak directly to the core of the modern conservative movement – are we going to allow ourselves to be pushed around by liberal extremists, or are we going to fight back?

I want to send Washington Democrats a message that their attempts to distract aren't working – I stand with Rush Limbaugh against liberal attacks.

And the link to donate to the NRCC, while not explicitly embedded in this text, is at the top of the email.

Just to be clear, I'm not hitting the outrage button here. I'm just pointing this out because it's such a perfect illustration of the way your modern GOP functions in these situations. To fully grasp this, try to picture the Democrats reacting to the GOP's assault on them over MoveOn's anti-Petraeus ad by refusing en masse to condemn the ad and then blasting out an email, complete with a fundraising link, lamenting the persecution of MoveOn.

It just wouldn't happen -- out of both politics and principle. Dems have internalized the idea that the parameters of the debate in D.C. are such that doing such a thing would amount to instant mass political immolation. And -- agree with them or not -- some Democrats actually would hesitate to do this out of a genuine belief that Petraeus shouldn't have been called "General BetrayUs."

Not so the Republicans. This episode reminds us yet again of the GOP's gut-level understanding that unity is imperative in situations like this. In order to maintain it, they're willing if necessary to stand by a fellow who cheerfully urinated on thousands of troops because they don't agree with the President -- and to then march in lockstep behind the laughably transparent falsehood that he never said the words that came out of his mouth. The GOP is so committed to not cracking in the face of the Dem assault that they are now raising money off the idea that Rush is the victim here, even though there's no doubt whatsoever that Rush said what he said.

The final twist to this, incidentally, is that Republicans themselves actually attacked Democrats last year for doing exactly this same sort of fundraising. During the heat of Campaign 2006, the Republicans launched a full scale assault on the Dems for "raising money" off of a web video that showed flag-draped coffins. But as Dems in D.C. remind me, there was no appeal for funds in the ad -- just a fundraising link at the top of the standard email template that blasted the ad out to supporters. Now, of course, GOPers are raising money off Rush's remarks sliming troops in exactly the same manner they condemned Dems for doing.

Again, this isn't about outrage. I might not be noting this at all if GOPers hadn't attacked Dems for doing something similar with a standard email fundraising template. I'm just marveling at it as a kind of perfect epilogue to this whole sorry affair. The full NRCC petition is after the jump.

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Poll: Majority Favors Withdrawal; Minority Favors Petraeus Plan
(October 4, 2007 -- 11:27 AM EDT // link // )

In recent days Kevin Drum and others have been wondering aloud about a batch of recent polls that suggest some confusion as to what pace of withdrawal from Iraq the public wants. As Drum noted, a recent Washington Post poll found that nearly 70 percent want war funding reduced -- but at the same time, a majority says that the Bush/Petraeus plan to return troop counts to pre-surge levels by next summer is about right or too quick a withdrawal.

So what gives here? Why are majorities saying they want relatively rapid withdrawal while also showing support for the Bush plan, which doesn't accomplish withdrawal? Which does the public want?

Now we have a new poll that, for the first time, helps us really answer this question: A new Gallup poll released this week. The key to this poll is that, rather than ask about rapid withdrawal and Petraeus' plan separately, the survey actually asks the public which of the two they prefer in a head-to-head matchup. Here's the key result:

If you had to choose, which plan would you say you favor -- reducing troop levels to 130,000 by next summer and not committing to further reductions until that time, (or) withdrawing most U.S. troops from Iraq within nine months' time?

Reducing troop levels and not committing to further reductions: 44%

Withdrawing most troops within 9 months' time: 53%

When offered a direct choice between the Bush/Petraeus plan and rapid withdrawal in nine months, a clear majority chooses the latter, and a minority chooses the former.

So how to explain some of the undeniably confusing and self-contradictory numbers in some of these other polls, then? Why the degree of support for the B/P plan when it's at odds with the public's clear demand for a withdrawal timetable?

Gallup says that the reason for this is that people want withdrawal but aren't super fussy about the pace of it, and will settle for the withdrawal of the "surge" troops for now. I'd like to suggest another related possibility: The explanation lies in way the questions have been asked about the B/P plan.

These surveys have tended to offer folks three choices: (a) B/P; (b) withdrawal more quickly than B/P; and (c) withdrawal more slowly than B/P. The quicker and slower options are not at all specific, while the B/P one is. So, when they're not offered a specific withdrawal option, lower-than-expected numbers go for the nonspecific faster withdrawal plan and some shift over to the specific plan on the table, which does have a troop reduction in it -- i.e., B/P. Then when they're offered specific plans for more rapid withdrawal later in the same surveys, they support them in sizable majorities.

After all, the bottom line is that in the above Gallup survey voters were offered a choice between the specific B/P plan and a specific plan for more rapid withdrawal -- and a majority picked more rapid withdrawal while a minority picked B/P. In other words, the public still wants out, and when given the option to say so, they do just that.

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Two For One! NY Times Reporter Fact-Checks Rush Limbaugh And John Boehner
(October 3, 2007 -- 8:14 PM EDT // link // )

Credit where credit's due: The New York Times's Carl Hulse has come through with a fair piece on the whole Rush Limbaugh "phony soldiers" controversy.

Hulse fact-checks Rush Limbaugh's bogus pushback that his remark was taken out of context, and for good measure also runs the facts on John Boehner's phony efforts to spin his way out of his assertion that troop deaths in Iraq are a "small price" to pay for defeating Al Qaeda.

First, Limbaugh:

After the liberal media watchdog organization Media Matters sounded the alarm about his comments, Mr. Limbaugh said on subsequent shows that he was talking about only one discredited man who claimed to be a wounded veteran. “I was not talking about antiwar, active duty troops,” he insisted.

Yet analysts for Media Matters noted that Mr. Limbaugh’s first reference to the discredited man came nearly two minutes after his plural reference to phony soldiers.

That word "plural" is key. Then on to John Boehner's nonsensical assertion that his "small price" remark was a reference only to the financial cost of the war:

Mr. Boehner’s aides later said he was referring to the financial costs of the war though his comment was in response to a question that also included the military toll.

It sure was.

Relatedly, this provides an opening to say something churlish about The Washington Post's new Fact Checker section, which many of you probably know about. This blog, of course, is all for fact-checking. But do we really need a separate section for that? Shouldn't fact-checking take place in every single article that these papers publish, as Hulse did here?

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NY Times: Hillary's Fundraising Numbers More Important Than Fate Of The Planet
(October 3, 2007 -- 3:38 PM EDT // link // )

Okay, not quite. But sort of. Lemme explain.

Today's New York Times went huge with the news that Hillary bested Barack in fundraising yesterday, splashing its story on the front page with three columns above the fold. Towards the very end of the story, Times reporter Patrick Healy reveals that the Hillary people deliberately leaked their fundraising info yesterday to distract attention from Barack's big anti-nukes speech yesterday:

Then, as Mr. Obama was announcing his fund-raising results on Monday, the Clinton campaign kept quiet because it did not want to share the news cycle with him, Clinton advisers say. As a final move, yesterday, the advisers said they deliberately tried to upstage Mr. Obama during his Iraq speech.

That's a nice piece of reporting, but really, if this is so, then why is The New York Times helping Hillary "upstage" Obama by splashing this all over its front page? The paper buried its piece on Obama's speech deep in the paper. Is Hillary's fundraising win really far more newsworthy than Obama's major speech on an issue that quite literally has profound implications for the fate of the planet? Maybe Times editors thought that the speech was old news, because the paper had broken the story about the speech a day in advance, but even that piece was buried, too.

Was Hillary's fundraising score huge front page news? When Obama announced raising an astounding $32 million back in July, the paper put the story on page 13. The Times piece on Hillary's fundraising numbers justifies its prominent placement by claiming that it meant that "a major dynamic" in the race had "shifted." But has this really happened in any meaningful sense? Deeper in the piece it says that Obama has still outraised Hillary in cash for the primary overall, and even characterizes Hillary's lead in primary funds this quarter, which is only $3 million, as "modest."

It's a big stretch to claim that this shows that a "major dynamic" has shifted. Indeed, it's virtually certain that the $3 million difference in their primary fundraising this quarter will have no appreciable impact whatsoever on the outcome of the primary. After all, we don't even know how much primary cash the campaigns have on hand -- a far more important indicator. And numbers like these -- which mean little or nothing to, you know, the voters -- will be long forgotten when actual voting begins.

Don't get me wrong. Hillary's $27 million is obviously a much bigger haul than Obama's $20 million, and Obama's people are unhappy about it because it will cause a shift of sorts -- in the direction of insider chatter. But the bottom line is that both sides will have more than enough cash to jam TV ads down the throats of voters until they puke.

The larger point here is that importance of fundraising numbers is not preordained. Rather, they're given inflated importance by editorial decisions like the one the Times made today. You can bet that loud cackles of happy laughter broke out at Hillary headquarters when they saw the paper's front page this morning.

Update: As Ana Marie Cox puts it: "I don't know why we even bother with, you know, elections and stuff."

Update II: And Ana makes the case at length, with an interesting twist, in a new podcast she just posted over at Time.com's Swampland blog. Take a look.

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Howard Kurtz: Media Covering Hillary's Laugh Because It's "More Fun" Than Covering Her Iraq Stance
(October 3, 2007 -- 11:15 AM EDT // link // )

Via Matthew Yglesias, The Washington Post's Howard Kurtz has weighed in with a long piece today on the fact that the press is lavishing a huge amount of attention on Hillary's laugh.

Kurtz explains this phenomenon thusly:

The subtext here is that the media have collectively decided that the wife of the 42nd president is the inevitable nominee and a good bet to become the 44th Oval Office occupant. Lacking much of a horse race, since Clinton has maintained a 20-point national lead over Barack Obama all year, journalists are resorting to a classic general-election question: Are Americans ready to have this woman in their living rooms every night for four years? Are they comfortable with her personality? Do they like her voice?

Plus, examining her personality quirks is more fun than deconstructing her stance on Iraq.

How nice. In a sense we should be thanking Kurtz here. He's done us a public service by laying bare the media's frivolity in all its inane glory. According to Kurtz, many of his colleagues are obsessing over The Laugh because examining Hillary's personality is "more fun" than examining her Iraq stance, and they've all "collectively decided" that Hillary is the inevitable Dem nominee and is all but certain to be our next President. Isn't that lovely?

I understand that Kurtz was taking a gently ironic poke at his media colleagues. Still, I'd genuinely like to know what Kurtz, a media expert, actually thinks of all this. Should coverage be dictated by the fact that her laugh is a more "fun" topic than Iraq, or by the media's collective decision that Hillary "is the inevitable nominee"? Should media folks make such a decision at all? Isn't all this inanity kind of a bad thing?

I know, I know, this is all boring, earnest stuff. Still, I'm going to go out on a limb and stipulate that it matters who our next President is. But as Kurtz, the ultimate media insider, has now confirmed, to his media colleagues this is apparently just another laughing matter.

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Right-Wing Radio Host Melanie Morgan Lashes Out At This Blog
(October 2, 2007 -- 6:11 PM EDT // link // )

Sometimes the winger antics can descend so deep into low comedy that all you can do is kick back with a stiff one and enjoy a hearty chuckle at it.

Case in point: Right-wing talk show host Melanie Morgan, who's been aggressively defending Rush Limbaugh over his "phony soldiers" comment, saying that his remarks were taken out of context, etc., etc. You may remember Morgan from last year, when she said that if New York Times executive editor Bill Keller were convicted of treason over press coverage, she'd have "no problem" if he were sent to the "gas chamber."

Well, yesterday Morgan strung up the hangman's noose on the air once again. This time, the target was yours truly.

Morgan ripped into the author of this blog in an extended radio tirade, slamming me for spreading a "smear" campaign against Rush because I've been writing about the controversy over Rush's comment. With her usual class and subtlety, she called this blog "The Horse's Ass," adding that Rush critics are "slimebags." Morgan's long segment on the Rush controversy was graciously emailed our way by blogger Spocko's Brain; we'll bring it to you in a bit.

But a funny thing occurred to me about the segment: Nowhere did she appear to read to her listeners the actual exchange between Rush and his caller where he used the "phony soldiers" phrase, so that they could make up their minds for themselves. She only discussed Rush's reference to a specific fake soldier much later. Maybe she did read them the relevant phrase at some point other than in that excerpt. I just don't know one way or the other.

So I emailed Morgan the key "phony soldiers" exchange from the transcript and asked her a fairly straightforward question:

Have you ever read this exchange, in full, to your listeners, so that they could judge for themselves what Rush's meaning was? If not, do you have any intention of reading it aloud to your listeners? And if not, why not?

Reason I ask is, I linked to Rush's transcript, and told readers of Rush's claim that he was referencing fake soldiers. So, I let my readers make up their own minds. Have you done this?

I've finally gotten my answer from Morgan: She's refusing to say.

Morgan's reply was to email over a statement reiterating her defense of Rush and her attack on his critics. There was no mention of Rush's actual quotes, no mention of whether she'd ever shared them with her listeners or intended to do so in the future, no answer to this simple question. She concluded: "I won't have any further comments beyond this."

Doesn't get any clearer than that.

Look, maybe Morgan has read her readers the exchange, or intends to. If she did, or does in the future, we'll be the first to post it -- guaranteed. Meanwhile, a transcript of her attack on this blog is after the jump.

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In Speech, Obama Repeatedly Attacks Beltway Media Establishment
(October 2, 2007 -- 1:25 PM EDT // link // )

A lot of people are talking about the big speech Barack Obama gave today calling for multilateral nuclear disarmament. But I wanted to focus in on what I think is a significant aspect of the speech that has little to do with the actual policy questions addressed here. Specifically, I'm talking about Obama's repeated attacks on the Beltway media establishment.

Obama came back to this theme again and again today. Here, for instance, Obama makes a clear reference to the D.C. punditry, pointing out its astonishing addiction to Republican narratives and frames in the aftermath of September 11 and in the run-up to the Iraq invasion:

"We were counseled by some of the most experienced voices in Washington that the only way for Democrats to look tough was to talk, act and vote like a Republican."

Here Obama targets the manifold failings of the media in the runup to the war -- specifically, the now-well-documented credulousness in the face of administration claims about Iraq WMD:

"Because the American people weren’t just failed by a President -- they were failed by much of Washington. By a media that too often reported spin instead of facts. By a foreign policy elite that largely boarded the bandwagon for war."

Here's Obama fast-forwarding and attacking D.C. pundits for their endless fascination with the MoveOn-bashes-Petraeus story:

"The fact that violence today is only as horrific as in 2006 is held up as progress. Washington politicians and pundits trip over each other to debate a newspaper advertisement while our troops fight and die in Iraq."

What's striking about these lines is how tightly they're in sync with the liberal blogospheric critique of the Beltway media. All these points hit on by Obama here -- the frequent pundit assertion that Dems will look weak if they don't walk in lockstep behind the GOP; the uncritical acceptance of administration spin; the punditry and media's willingness to parrot the GOP line on stories such as the MoveOn ad flap -- are central pillars in that media critique.

This shows us yet again how this sort of media crit, and this sort of pushback against both mainstream and right-wing media figures, have really gone mainstream in Democratic Presidential politics. Sounding this media critique has not only become de rigeur for Dem Presidential candidates as they seek to appeal to Dem primary voters, but has also become an arena where the campaigns are competing to outdo each other, often quite aggressively.

Recall, for instance, that early on in the campaign, John Edwards took the lead in pulling out of debates sponsored by Fox News -- and more to the point, challenged his rivals to do the same. Elizabeth Edwards, too, has taken a lead role in attacking right-wing pundits, going after Matt Drudge and directly confronting Ann Coulter on the air.

Meanwhile, Hillary hired press critic Peter Daou as her internet outreach chief. The Hillary campaign took great care to play up Bill Clinton's on-air attack on Fox's Chris Wallace as a way to get cred with bloggers and Dem activists. Both Hillary and Chris Dodd competed to most aggressively attack Bill O'Reilly when he went after YearlyKos. And here you have Obama saying things about the Beltway press and punditry that could have been written by Atrios or Glenn Greenwald.

Cynics will be tempted to dismiss all this as so much pandering. But the fact is, all this has amplified and given a higher-profile to the liberal press critique. This sort of pushback against the media -- historically the province of Republican candidates -- has become something no Dem campaign can afford to be without. It's an interesting development indeed.

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Limbaugh's Own Caller Knew "Phony Soldiers" Was General Reference To Antiwar Troops
(October 1, 2007 -- 5:49 PM EDT // link // )

With the pushback from Rush Limbaugh and his sycophants in the blogosphere and elsewhere in full swing today, I feel compelled to hit a point that's getting lost in all the noise:

Anyone defending Limbaugh needs to reckon with the fact that even Limbaugh's own caller understood perfectly that the talk show host's use of the "phony soldiers" phrase was a general reference to soldiers favoring withdrawal from Iraq.

That Limbaugh's pushback is about as credible as the labels on his prescription bottles isn't lost on all the wingnut bloggers. As Steve Benen notes, Rick Moran of Right Wing Nuthouse has a remarkably sane take on this. He points out that Limbaugh's defense -- that he was referring specifically to actual fake soldiers, rather than antiwar troops in general -- is, well, pure bullshit. Moran asks: "Which is more plausible? Limbaugh lumping people who disagree with him into one, overarching, insulting rubric or Rush carefully delineating between some soldiers who oppose the war and the Jesse Macbeths of the world?"

It's a good question. And the answer's obvious if you just look at the transcript of what the man actually said, and how his caller reacted. Here's the relevant chunk, in which Rush is talking about pro-withdrawal war critics:

RUSH: It's not possible intellectually to follow these people.

CALLER: No, it's not. And what's really funny is they never talk to real soldiers. They pull these soldiers that come up out of the blue and spout to the media.

RUSH: The phony soldiers.

CALLER: Phony soldiers. If you talk to any real soldier and they're proud to serve, they want to be over in Iraq, they understand their sacrifice and they're willing to sacrifice for the country.

This is just plain as day. As the transcript clearly shows, he used the phrase "phony soldiers" in direct response to his caller's complaint in general that we "never" hear from "real soldiers" who oppose the war, only troops who "spout" against the war "in the media."

What's more, even Limbaugh's caller took Limbaugh to be referring to antiwar troops in general. Take a look at the caller's response to the "phony soldiers" phrase. He replied: "Phony soldiers. If you talk to any real soldier and they're proud to serve, they want to be over in Iraq." The caller's response shows he understood Limbaugh's point: You're not a real soldier if you oppose the war; "any" real soldier "wants" to be serving in Iraq.

In other words, it really doesn't matter if Rush referred to any specific phony soldier long before this or long after this. When talking about Jesse MacBeth, he meant the phrase specifically. Here, however, he meant it generally. This larger category of phony soldier he described here includes MacBeth and all the other "phony soldiers" who are phony by dint of their desire to pull out of Iraq.

Rush may not have meant to say this. I think he did, but whatever his intended meaning, the bottom line is that he did say it. And his caller understood this perfectly, even if Rush's sycophantic defenders are pretending not to.

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Crappy And Inane Media Coverage Of Politics Is Not Inevitable
(October 1, 2007 -- 1:24 PM EDT // link // )

One of the things that gets this blog's blood-pressure soaring on a regular basis is this bizarre idea that crappy and inane personality-driven political coverage -- what John Harris and Mark Halperin call the "freak show" -- is inevitable, as natural and irresistible as the changing seasons.

Case in point: Joe Klein and Karen Tumulty on Time.com's Swampland blog. Both have weighed in with posts about the new assault that's being waged on Hillary by the media right now.

To their credit, they both edge gingerly towards articulating the problem. Klein, for instance, predicts that a "major" media assault on Hillary is coming, opining that the focus on theatrics to the exclusion of issues "can lead to the sort of trivial hen-pecking that so many people rightfully hate about political coverage." Tumulty, meanwhile, opines on the idiotic media obsession with Hillary's laugh, observing that in the New York Times, "it seems that laugh is being dissected everywhere I look." Fine, good. Klein and Tumulty suggest accurately that the media nitwits are out in force and up to their usual tomfoolery on Hillary. True.

But then Klein writes this:

What works against her -- and Dowd is astute on this -- is the sense that she comes not only with Bill attached, but also with a permanent carnival: All the screeching and screaming from the right and from those in the media obsessed with the Clinton family follies.

Meanwhile, Tumulty closes her post basically without comment on the absurdity of the media's Laugh Obsession, instead noting that Hillary's laugh strategy is a nonstarter: "It does seem like a no-win for a candidate who has so often been accused of coming off as a scold."

But look, this "permanent carnival" that Klein is talking about doesn't have to be happening. It's the result of editorial decisions that are made by human beings -- human beings who would be a little more reluctant to make the decision to lavish attention on the inane if the likes of Klein and Tumulty nailed them for it more often.

This blog doesn't mean to be faulting the Time.com duo. After all, it's probably expecting too much to ask Klein and Tumulty to skewer their colleagues in the press. The rules of the guild frown on that very explicitly. And to their credit, both did edge a bit in that direction on Hillary and The Laugh.

But we need more. Lots more. As Klein himself says, this election is kind of important: "We really better get this decision right." Yes, we really better. And both Klein and Tumulty know full well that the sort of political coverage that's again rearing its head with the Laugh Obsession is just deeply inane, even antithetical to our ability to get it right this time, as they gently hint here. It would be nice to hear them come out and say so -- a little more often, and a little more forcefully. Maybe even name names from time to time.

Sure, an ego or two might get bruised. But again, we really better get this decision right.

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Dowd Approvingly Quotes New Republic's Leon Wieseltier: Hillary Is "Like Some Hellish Housewife"
(October 1, 2007 -- 10:51 AM EDT // link // )

In her latest column on Hillary, Maureen Dowd quotes New Republic editor Leon Wieseltier as follows:

Others do not underestimate her relentlessness. As Leon Wieseltier, the literary editor of The New Republic, once told me: “She’s never going to get out of our faces. ... She’s like some hellish housewife who has seen something that she really, really wants and won’t stop nagging you about it until finally you say, fine, take it, be the damn president, just leave me alone.”

Hellish housewife?

You don't have to like Hillary -- a Yale law grad and twice-elected U.S. Senator who is the first woman with a reasonable shot at becoming President -- to find this a tad off-putting. To the likes of Dowd this will sound soooo earnest and soooo tedious. But it really is worth marveling at that America's premiere female political columnist is quoting this approvingly.

Of course, this isn't all that surprising when you consider that in the same column Dowd also wrote:

The town is divided into two camps: those who think that, after 16 years of Hillary pushing herself forward, the public will get worn out and reject her, and those who think that, after 16 years of Hillary pushing herself forward, the public will get worn down and give in to her.

Yuk-ity-yuk-ity-yuk...yuk...

...yuk...

Mightn't voters make up their mind whether to back Hillary based on, like, you know, what she's saying about the issues during the campaign, rather than based on their reaction to her "nagging"? Naaah. Not possible. Not possible, at any rate, to anyone in Maureen's "town." Remember, your D.C. pundits can always be relied on to confuse their own vapidity and frivolity with that of the public. Standard operating procedure, ladies and gents.

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