CAMPAIGN SLOG 70 Days to Go!

On the way to Election Day 2008, the following has happened:

Is there such a thing as toxic love? In recent days, Republicans have been loving them some Hillary Rodham Clinton, calling her wise and prescient and all sorts of things they presumably wouldn't be calling her if she'd won the Democratic nomination. After releasing an ad suggesting that Clinton was "passed over" as Barack Obama's veep pick because she told "the truth" and Obama didn't like it, McCain's camp released another ad yesterday featuring Debra Bartoshevich, a "proud Hillary Clinton Democrat" (but no longer Wisconsin delegate) who praises Clinton's "experience and judgment" and then announces that for the first time in her life, she's decided to support a Republican. (Guess who?)

Joe Wineke, chairman of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, offered few loving words for the turncoat.

"The people I think that are most angry at Ms. Bartoshevich are Clinton delegates because it puts a pox on all of them," Wineke said yesterday from Denver. He added: "She can do what she wants. She was stripped of her status."

Meanwhile, the RNC just released an ad featuring clips of Clinton praising McCain's experience -- and dissing Obama's lack of it. "Was she right?" the ad asks ominously.

Hillary Clinton = oracle? (Or, Hillary Clinton = perfect foil?)

Clinton spurned her suitors yesterday in Denver.

"I am Hillary Clinton, and I do not approve that message," she said.

-- Libby Copeland