The Obama campaign is attacking Senator Clinton on the basis that the money she has raised from lobbyists makes her a tool of special interests rather than a representative of the people. (link) What they are failing to mention in this new attack is their own effort to carefully conceal the money they have raised through lobbyists.

Frank Rich has a brain. I used to enjoy reading him and watching him stick it to whatever Republican talking point that most raised his ire on a given week. But I don't understand why he has chosen to be so subjectively hateful of late to Senator Clinton. For example, after discussing her recent Town Hall event in a tone dripping with sarcasm, Rich says (link):

Fairytale # 1: Michelle is so much better of a surrogate than Bill because she is believable.

Here is a video of this fairytale in the media.

Problem Number 1

The biggest problem Barack has with the Iraq War Vote, the one that supposedly shows his superior judgment, is that his most high profile supporter, Oprah notwithstanding, is on the record supporting Hillary Clinton’s position. On March 21 2004, Teddy Kennedy was on Meet the Press. First, Tim Russert pointed out that in 2002 Ted had clearly said that Bush was trustworthy on the issue (link):

The Big News in NY-29 today is the fourth quarter fundraising by Netroots Superstar Eric Massa.  He outraised his opponent Randy Kuhl for the third straight quarter.  Both NY state blog The Albany Project and local blogs like Rochester Turning have this part of the story.

I am still following up on the Jackson comment. I e-mailed Jake Tapper about the questions raised about the transcript and video he provided that included President Clinton's comment about Jesse Jackson, CCing a lot of people at ABC News so that it made it impossible for him to ignore my e-mail. After my first e-mail the full video of the interview of President Clinton, which several of us had been asking for, suddenly became available.

Over at TPM, I ran across this comment about the now infamous statement by Bill Clinton:

Hats off to the Obama team for a very strong win in South Carolina. I credit their win to a strong GOTV effort and organization, especially of the African American community. In the run-up to the primary I missed the stories hinting at the strength of that machine. The first hint of that came from Jim Clyburn here. I'm not saying the Congressman overtly told people to support Obama.

I don't think either Bill Clinton or Ronald Reagan had the biggest impact on the trajectory of the US. I do think a lot of people have forgotten some of the good things about Bill's presidency. There is much about the Clinton presidency that was innovative and influential. And in spite of all the ugliness of the Lewinsky episode and the resultant perjury charges and the loss of his Arkansas law license, Bill Clinton still finished his second term with higher approval ratings that Ronald Reagan had at the end of his second term.