The Politics of Divorce

"If Clinton's personal history was a matter of tremendous national significance as a candidate and as a president, then it's not unreasonable to wonder why McCain isn't subjected to the same scrutiny. I'd prefer both issues are off the table, but I'm hard pressed to imagine why only Democratic presidential candidates' personal lives are of interest in the context of a national campaign."

On the right, Townhall's Matt Lewis offers a little compassionate conservatism:

"Some McCain supporters take solace in the fact that McCain and his ex-wife are still friends. My take is that it's unrealistic to assume someone could come back from years of torture as a POW, and resume normal domestic tranquility -- even with the person who stuck with them through the whole mess . . .Personally, this story seems like a bit of a hit job."

Speaking of personal stuff, Time reports on a new Obama strategy:

"The Obama campaign has built what might best be described as a Web-based rumor clearinghouse, located at fightthesmears.com, in which it hopes all the shady stories about Obama's faith, his family and his rumored connections with controversial figures can go to die.

"Obama is enlisting his millions of supporters to help him hunt down and quash these stories, just as those supporters helped him turn his insurgent campaign into a history-making juggernaut."

The first of 10,000 general-election polls is out:

"Democrat Barack Obama begins his presidential race against Republican John McCain with a lead in the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, but not so great an edge as might be expected given the gale-force political headwinds against Sen. McCain's party.

"Sen. Obama leads Sen. McCain by 47% to 41%, a spread that is twice the edge he had in the previous poll in late April, and outside the poll's 3.1-percentage-point margin of error . . .

"Sen. Obama continues to do poorly among white male voters, according to the poll. More ominous is his weakness among white women, particularly suburbanites, who generally are open to Democratic candidates and whose votes could be decisive.

"Some good news for the presumed Democratic nominee: Despite suggestions during the Democratic primary contests that many Hispanics and Hillary Clinton supporters wouldn't support him, the poll shows both groups overwhelmingly do." (He's up 62-28 among Hispanics.)

So much for the endless punditry on how Hillary Clinton's voters would bail on him.