Open Season on Hillary

Time's Mark Halperin agrees that the media coverage is hurting Hillary:

"Fact #1: For more than a month, Hillary Clinton's only chance to win the nomination has been to find a way to disqualify Barack Obama as a stable, acceptable choice in the minds of superdelegates. ('Tonya Harding in the conservatory with a kitchen sink' is not a new reality.)

"Fact #2: The media has -- once again -- largely declared the race for the Democratic nomination over, giving Clinton next to no chance to prevail.

"Fact #3: In recent days, the Obama campaign has used e-mails and conference calls to engage in its most negative and personal assaults on Clinton since the campaign began.

"If Obama has the nomination wrapped up, why is his campaign going after Clinton so hard?"

Interesting question indeed.

As for the voters (remember them?): 22 percent of Dems say Hillary should drop out, but, then again, 22 percent say Obama should drop out, according to Rasmussen.

In the New Republic, historian David Greenberg says Clinton is being unfairly accused:

"The bickering has, troublingly, validated a piece of conventional wisdom among a liberal commentariat that was already tilting heavily toward Obama: that Clinton is 'ruthless,' 'vicious,' even 'Nixonian' -- an unscrupulous appendage of her husband's 'machine' (a word seldom used about the far better oiled Obama apparatus). As Obama's guru David Axelrod would have it, 'They are literally trying to do anything to win this nomination.' You hear it said everywhere, from blogs to high-toned op-ed pages. But this virulent meme is untrue, and -- quite apart from the current contest -- anyone who cares about liberalism and its future should be worried by its spread.

"To begin with, the charge that Clinton is Nixonian is as scurrilous as the smears that Obama is a closet Muslim or that John McCain sired a bastard child. Her campaign, simply put, is not categorically different from any other hard-driving presidential bid, including Obama's own. . . .

"Take a test: Did you think Clinton's '3 a.m.' ad doubting Obama's readiness to handle crises was fear-mongering, rather than a valid, if slightly lurid, gambit? Did you read her 'as far as I know' response to a question about Obama's religion as a shameful effort to stoke rumors rather than an unfortunate verbal tic amid a firm slap-down of those rumors? If so, you probably voted for Obama. . . .

"The demand for heads to roll whenever an aide misspeaks has reached a pitch that is dangerous, not for any singular ugliness but for its pettiness. And the press, to its discredit, lets these campaign-generated pseudo-events shape its coverage. But, as noted recently by James Carville -- no stranger to political combat -- campaigning is training for governing, preparing candidates to 'get hit, stand strong, and, if necessary, hit back.' "