Don't Quote Me

Was Hillary for the war before she was against it? Dick Polman draws the parallel:

"In some ways, Clinton's decision to back the funding cutoff conjures memories of the war votes cast by John Kerry on eve of the '04 primary season. He had voted to authorize the war in 2002, but then, barely a year later, with antiwar rival Howard Dean on the rise, he felt compelled to vote against an $87-billion war funding bill in order to please the party base. He later paid dearly for that decision in the general election, when the GOP successfully painted him as a flip-flopper.

"The big question is, would that work again for the GOP? Have Clinton and Obama handed the Republicans a campaign issue, enabling the next nominee to paint either one of them as 'out of the mainstream' 'flip-floppers' who voted 'against the troops'? That 'troops' line arguably might have credence, since even Democratic Sen. Carl Levin, who voted against the cutoff, invoked it: 'I don't want to send a message that we are not going to provide funding for the troops.'

"Indeed, while the polls do report that most Americans oppose the war and want a withdrawal timetable, there is still little appetite for a timetable that severs money to the troops; in the latest CNN-Opinion Research survey, 60 percent of Americans said they opposed the Feingold approach.

"The answer is unknowable, of course, because none of us can predict the national mood one year from now. But it's quite possible that Clinton and Obama have little to fear, for this reason: the war is much less popular today than it was in 2003-2004, and it doesn't take a genius to predict that it could be even less popular in 2008. It's also possible that support for a funding cutoff might become the centrist position in American politics."

John Edwards's explanation of his most recent employment just isn't washing for Betsy Newmark:

"Last week I wrote about how John Edwards had a political tone deafness problem with saying one thing about poverty but also acting another way in his private life. Building a humongous house or paying 20 times what most men pay for a haircut doesn't show a guy in touch with real people. But he's really surpassed himself now with this story of his going to work for a hedge fun purportedly so that he could study the intersection of high finance and poverty. Why he couldn't just call up the hedge fund and ask them a few questions is unclear. Why he couldn't use his perch as supposedly leading a quasi-think tank at UNC on the subject to do some research wasn't clear. Or perhaps it was all clear. Because his most recent financial statement reveals that for this supposedly part-time job at the hedge fund last year, he earned almost half a million dollars."

Finally, some journalists will stop at nothing to keep you fully informed. Chicago Tribune columnist Ellen Warren goes bra-shopping.