Murdoch Diplomacy: Behind O'Reilly's Electric Attacks

"Bottom line: I just don't think she was hungry enough for it in the beginning. It wasn't really until the ten-in-a-row loss that she started doing stuff like Saturday Night Live and Jon Stewart. In the beginning, it was hard to get her to do those things. Early in the campaign, she spent much more time in the Senate than the campaign would have liked. It took the threat of a real loss to get her hungry enough for it. But time was lost. If you ask the Iowa folks, I'm sure they would tell you she wasn't there enough.

"Clearly [Obama] was a phenomenon. He was tapping something really different than anyone had ever seen before . . . Months and months before Iowa, he was getting record crowds. I just think they should have really gone after him back in the summer and in the fall. I know it would have been a difficult decision to make back then. She's the leader of the party, the standard bearer, the big dog. Everyone thinks she's gonna win and walk away with it. Why go picking on Barack Obama? But that's just something the campaign should have done sooner.

"We didn't lay a serious glove on him until the fall. We tried to a little bit, but we weren't successful. We did silly stuff, like talk about David Geffen. It wasn't the substantive contrast we needed to make.

"Devastating vulnerabilities such as Obama's associations with Wright and [William] Ayers were not unearthed by the campaign's vaunted research team in time to be fully taken advantage of--despite being readily available in the public domain."

"Running as an incumbent, as the inevitable candidate, was probably our biggest mistake, particularly in a time when the country is really hungry for change."

"We ran a frontrunner campaign in a party that punishes frontrunners . . . And [the campaign] was overstaffed with hired guns with no real allegiance to HRC; she was the safest and easiest bet, no sacrifice necessary."

Quite a laundry list.

Obama may have gotten a hug from the Israeli ambassador at a 60th anniversary ceremony, the Chicago Tribune reports, but "the event could not entirely mask the fact that doubts remain about the Illinois senator among some quarters of the Jewish community, where uncertainty lingers about his commitment to Israel and issues such as his relationship with Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., which one New York legislator said 'scares me very, very much.'

"Jewish voters are near the top of the list of voting blocs Obama will have to reach out to as he turns to the general election. From appearances in synagogues to meetings with Jewish groups and even an interview with an Israeli newspaper, Obama's courtship shows some signs of paying off, with a recent Gallup Poll suggesting Obama leading Sen. John McCain 61 percent to 32 percent among Jewish voters."

Who better to consult on this question than Tom Friedman? He says Obama critics should knock off a "churlish whispering campaign" and acknowledge there is a bipartisan consensus for strongly defending Israel:

"The notion that a President Barack Obama would have a desire or ability to walk away from this consensus American position is ludicrous."

Will the California Supreme Court ruling legalizing gay marriage become a big presidential issue? Or will Ellen DeGeneres's plan to marry her girlfriend make the public more accepting? Salon Editor Joan Walsh weighs in: