This is a copy of an email that I sent to Elizabeth Edwards.

Subject: No black ghost for Elizabeth or me

Dear Elizabeth
We both have cancer--and there is no treatment yet for what we have. We're not sitting around waiting for the black ghost or Cheney, or for this presidential campaign to destroy the Democratic Party.

The campaign has gone on too long and has become too ugly. If it goes on to the convention, both candidates will be destroyed. My goal was to have Edwards in '08, but now my goal is just to save the Democratic Party.

The way we do that is to stop Clinton and Obama from destroying each other before the convention and get Democrats to stop all the negative nonsense that is going on about them.

Edwards, Kerry, Kennedy, Gore and Dean must use their influence now to bring the issues to the front. A shakeup can change the dynamics of the campaign. How they do it is up to them. A Nobel Prize winner, a senior senator, the head of the DNC, a Vietnam veteran and your husband surely must have the know how to successfully shape such a watershed moment in the history of the Democratic Party.

Sincerely,

Jean Azulay

Bronxville, NY

I am fearful that racism rather than democracy will win if Clinton is able to steal the nomination through superdelegates or McCain beats Obama in the general election.

People may allow the outrageous to happen due to their racist resentment against blacks. Not too far beneath the surface of the constant declaration that Obama is an empty suit is the anger that Obama has a sense of entitlement unjustified by his actual accomplishments. Yet this is a person who has fought like no other for our civil liberties and government transparency, a person who fought for children's heathcare in Illinois and against federal minimum sentencing guidelines. His attempts to stop the saber-rattling against Iran and end the use of cluster bombs on innocent children speak of a rare courage.

His trajectory based on what he has accomplished at such a young age is strong; his past accomplishment solid, and his success in terms of mobilizing people and money for his party unparalleled. He deserves the nomination and the presidency.

But still everywhere you hear this anger at his sense of entitlement. In other words, people are distorting what affirmative action is and saying that Obama is the affirmative action president.

So if outrages are committed against him, people may not rise to his defense, given how widespread racist resentment against his rise. Racism may win, not democracy. Certainly anti-Muslim prejudice may win, not democracy. Or rather, democracy will become the vehicle not for rational, informed decision but the expression of prejudice and resentment.

There is also another aspect of this problem of racism. While I read an article by John Judis about how widespread in the Latino community are stereotypes of black laziness (he drew on studies from University of Houston and University of North Carolina) and how many Latinos seemed to hold Obama, a champion of immigrant rights, responsible for the perceived unfairness of any and all black politicians, there was almost no media coverage of this problem in the Latino community. The anti-black prejudice in the Latino community was not put in the spotlight so that the community would be embarrassed by it and forced to address it.

But as Toni Morrison has reminded us, part of the Americanization process has historically been learning how to reduce black humanity to _____. And certainly immigrants come here with already inherited prejudices. I know how true this; I am from an Asian immigrant community which gave me grief for marrying a black woman. But we have been able to turn around my family and the community as a whole. The idea that change is possible resonates profoundly with me.

So there is certainly hope, but we have to be honest about the problem and confront it.

A.L. Hartal

Walnut Creek, CA

If you expect me to hinge my future, and the future of America, on American youth, democracy is dead. Ask any 18-to-24-year-old to name five important Americans, and the name Paris Hilton will most likely come up--and before you peg me as a senior, I am under 40.

A vote for Hillary Clinton is a vote for the best candidate for President of the United States of America. I will not be forced to vote for an inexperienced egotist with no track record because of a combination of uneducated and disenfranchised youth and misogony.

It's really about the economy, stupid. And most Americans, after eight years of "compassion" and "conservatism" are ready for something different. And while we may be ready for something different, we are certainly not ready for Mr. Obama.

Mark my words, if the Democrats want to lose they will put Obama on the ticket in any position. This is how strongly I feel, and I think that I represent many Americans who perhaps are too afraid to speak out at this point, I would not vote for any ticket--even Hillary Clinton's--if Obama's name appeared.

Jennifer Beegle

Houston, TX

A vote for Clinton in any primary is like a vote for McCain in November. Hillary Clinton will not defeat McCain, but Obama will. The huge turnout of young people alone will ensure an Obama victory. Just look at the demographics of the last several elections- turnout for voters under 25 was abysmal. I have not seen the excitement that Obama has engendered in young voters in a long, long time. Hillary Clinton must drop out--now. Our nation has been given one last chance. We simply cannot allow another Republican victory.

John Giarratana

Jersey City, NJ

We might think that the Americans had enough of Bush-era policies, but we could be wrong. Maybe the majority loves those fear-mongering, smear-peddling, personal-attack politics Hillary Clinton embraced recently. There are several primaries to go, then there are the general elections and we will know for sure.

We might believe that our country is led by our principles, but if we chose next President based primarily upon the fact that a rejected candidate has an "inappropriate" middle name, Kenyan origin and different skin color, then we will know what we truly believe in. Instead of discussing our guiding principles, we are discussing absolutely irrelevant circumstances.

Willingness to continue fighting is commendable, but willingness to split a party in order to secure an individual's nomination is deplorable. The world doesn’t depend on any individual, it depends on our guiding principles. We don’t elect a candidate to lead us, we elect the principles to be implemented during next four years.

Bush and Clinton have the power of a brand name, but the smart people know you could get an equally good product at dramatically lower price if you are not addicted to those brain-washing commercials. The companies pay billions for advertisements because those ads change the way we think. The problem is, it is usually for worse. Luckily, in democracy we have a right to make the wrong choices. Less luckily, we have to live with them afterwards.

It truly doesn’t matter who answers the 3 am phone call in the White House, as long as sound principles are used in making a decision. But if the wrong principles were used five years earlier in making a critical decision, what reason is there to believe the next time it would be different?

The problem with the Iraq War authorization five years ago wasn’t just a use of the wrong principle. The problem was a complete disregard for the US Constitution. Our forefathers knew how dire the consequence of declaring a war might be and intentionally took such power out of hands of a single individual and gave it to Congress.

Remember, our members of Congress didn’t declare the Iraq War five years ago. They just transferred their constitutional rights into the hands of George W. Bush. That is a sin both Hillary Clinton and John McCain are guilty of.

Additionally, they chose to believe the bunch of lifelong paper-pushers (Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz) instead of professional career soldier General Shinseki, who testified in front of the Congress how many troops would truly be needed in Iraq.

And they did it after the ruling Administration cut taxes to finance a looming war and asked for a shopping spree instead of personal sacrifices.

This means if Clinton or McCain were elected, any mistake they could make while in the White House would be our fault for choosing an obviously underqualified candidate for such important position.

Kenan Porobic

Charlotte, NC

Sure, Hillary is a monster. But so is humanitarian interventionist Samantha Powers--another one of those who fault the Iraq War for its execution but gives two thumbs up for regime change. Such a Tom Friedmanesque figure I can do without. Ditto for Goolsbee, Obama's free market economist from that Hotbed of right wing--pro-NAFTA, Anti-Medicare, anti-Social Security--conservatism, the University of Chicago Econ Dept.

It's time for Obama to Go Populist!

Hillary's lineup is worse with Berger, Albright, etc. McCain, forget about it...

All in all it's a miserable lineup. So who would Marx vote for?

Give me Obama or Nader or give me the death sentence with Clinton/McCain.

Howard Kaplan

Belmont, MA

Obama's "NAFTA-gate" issue was not that the campaign spoke with forked tongue but that Obama at first denied there had been any meeting. Then, when confronted with the evidence, Obama said something to the effect that he wasn't aware... hmm...

Caucuses seem inherently undemocratic. The value of voting is its privacy, secrecy even. In a ballot I can vote for whomever, without consulting with anyone or ever revealing for whom I voted. I can say one thing and vote differently. No one can reprimand me for my vote. Not so with caucuses. They are a collective affair, with a fair amount of "strong-arming" involved. There's the issue of peer pressure and conformity. Plus, caucuses discriminate against those without leisure time--to show up in the evening, when tired, facing childcare issues, or needing to be at work on a second job.

Obama sure didn't do much to prevent Maytag from shuttering its Illinois plant, and it appears he benefited financially from alliances with the corporate owners. The major industrial unions support Clinton. So do I. Clinton's brilliance, her command of the issues, her grasp of policy details, her strength, are dazzling.

Is it just me, or are Obama's speeches and his drawn out intonations incredibly boring? He just drags out those syllables... and says very little.

Lastly, the popular vote should determine the nominee. Obtaining pledged delegates is itself not totally democratic.

History shows us the significance of the Ohio primary. For Dems and Repubs, alike, it seems historically necessary to win the Ohio primary in order to win the general election. One exception was JFK, whose name was not on the Ohio ballot. Winning Ohio's primary is not sufficient to win , some have won Ohio but lost. But it's almost impossible to win without first winning the Ohio primary.

Obama has not seemed capable of winning any large, democratic states, with the one exception of swing state Missouri. He's won a slew of small, often red, states. But these states will remain red in the general election. He's not been able to win the core dem states: California, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts etc.

Tabatha Tenerman

Los Angeles, CA

The difference between the Obama and Clinton candidacies is quite stark.

Obama wins votes through his idealism, his message, and his charisma. Clinton scares up votes by running attack ads and circulating innuendo about Obama's ethnicity and religion.

Obama opposed the Iraq war. Clinton supported it.

Obama opposed the bankruptcy bill that sticks it to the working poor. Clinton voted for it.

Obama has run a fifty-state campaign which seeks to broaden the progressive coalition. Clinton has cherry-picked states she thinks she can win.

Obama appeals to a broad segment of the population: young voters, African-American voters, many independents, even some Republicans. Clinton appeals mostly to women over the age of 60, to diehard fans of her husband, and to uneducated voters.

Obama is offering us a different kind of politics. Clinton is offering us a continuation of Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton - an epoch many of us would like happily to close the book on.

John Nunn

New York, NY

You claim to be supporting Mr. Obama because he represents to you the best chance at forging a "new progressive majority." But the rhetorical question this article poses appears to be at odds with your stated reason for supporting this candidate. Is it to win, or is it because you want democracy to win? And this is not a semantical argument, mind you, because I think that this goes directly to the heart of this election.

If you want to win at any costs, you might support Mr. Obama. I, on the other hand, represent Americans who feel that not only is Mrs. Clinton by far the better candidate but she is also much more electable. I also feel that not only is democracy being undermined by the McDonald's advertising approach to campaigning that I see being used by the Obama camp but should he win--based on his past record, words, alliances and promises--the very being of America as a democracy would be at great risk.

Never before has America chosen a President with less information, less background, less experience and less examination. When I filled out my last job application I think it asked me for more information than I currently know about Mr. Obama, and if this is how the new progressive majority intends to protect democracy, democracy is already dead.

Jennifer Beegle

Houston, TX

There is a point that has been alluded to in this article; but not thoroughly explored. What makes any society civilized? Rules. Rules that we teach our children, as we have been taught for each of us to live by and to live in our society with.

Where are our role models for this? In this election, how many times have the rules changed? For instance, both Florida and Michigan, after repeated warnings, broke the rules and put their primaries ahead of those states that remained within the rules and left their primaries on Super Tuesday. What does this say about our society? About rules? That they are made to be broken? And when they are broken, we reward the breaker with a do-over?

With each failure, the Clinton campaign has advocated and argued for changing the rules. There are many, many examples, and each time, it is done to favor her, not the Democratic Party. The latest of these is Senator Clinton's refusal to allow Florida or Michigan to hold caucuses (because her campaign doesn't do as well with caucuses). If we operated in our jobs in the same manner as we have seen repeatedly demonstrated by the Clinton campaign--we'd be unemployed. In a civil society, we'd be charged, convicted and jailed.

It is no wonder that people are apathetic toward politics and don't exercise their right to vote. Perhaps our apathy is due to realizing that politics is one of the only places where playing by the rules doesn't count and playing dirty does.

Now along comes another candidate that challenges us to challenge the rule-breakers and says that we can win in politics by playing fairly and millions of people have stepped up to embrace that challenge.

It can be boiled down to this: Clinton: I will do it for you and enables the average citizen. Obama: We can do it together and empowers the average citizen. Clinton’s politics are politics as usual--rules don’t count. She believes you have to fight to win. Obama’s approach is to play by the rules. He believes you have to unite to win and get the things done that the country needs accomplished.

Rules count and it informs us of both character and judgment of those who play by them and those who ignore them and break them.

It seems that the only member of our society that has to live by the rules is the average citizen. Big companies don’t have to live by the rules: they hire lobbyists to persuade our elected officials to create rules which favor the corporations and not necessarily are our society. Our elected officials or politicians see themselves as held to a different standard or set of rules than the average citizen. We elect these officials to speak for us, the average citizens, and all too often find out that they are speaking for special interests instead.

The average citizen is being besieged on all sides. Where were the rules to oversee the lending practices that now have many average citizens losing their homes? Now everyone is paying for the lack of oversight. Homeowners blessed enough to keep their homes, see their values plummeting and the cost of refinancing soaring despite many decreases by the Federal Reserve to the short term rate of interest. Our banking industry, which condoned, if not participated in poor lending practices are receiving help but what about the average citizen?

Where were the rules? Who do the rules benefit?

Our elected officials have chosen to put us and our country into trillions of dollars of debt to aid the average citizens of Iraq, not America, and sending xour country into an increasingly severe economic downturn. The average citizens of this country and their children and grandchildren, because of the rules, will pay for this though the majority now opposes this course of action. The choice to go to war has made our defense contractors and military/industrial complex rich. And, this has not made us or our country safer.

More than ever before, we are at an historical tipping point. We, the average citizens, do have a voice through our right to vote. We can decide by whom we choose to elect to serve and represent us. We can decide who makes the rules and who has to live by them. Do we elect those who govern at the expense of the people? Or do we elect those who govern with the consent of the people?

Darlene Carnes

Ijamsville, MD

Please check your Canadian sources on NAFTA-gate before you play into Hillary's Rove Handbook on How to Destroy a Political Opponent. I thought the media, especially editors, would be smarter than that!

Clarice Begemann

Branford, CT

Obama has won only one big state, Illinois. He has been soundly defeated in the other big states. I don't buy into his "I am better than the rest. Trust me about my hope etc. I am only running for President because I care about the country." As many people have judged Hillary on what she thinks and does by her actions and words, I would say that Obama is ambitions, intelligent and aggressive. He sends out his other people to say things, so he looks like he has remained above the fray. As I see it, he doesn't have the stomach or the guts to come out and say and do what he really thinks. What would he do with Putin? We have a President right now that is that way. He has one thing on his mind and that is to become the first black President. It isn't about the country.

Has Hillary done many things wrong? You bet, but we know what they are. We don't know about Obama. It is easy to say, "I was against the war," but it is another to have been the Senate and actually voted (e.g., Kerry and Edwards). He is not the uniter you seem to think he is. He turns me off and has yet to earn my vote. But, as I have been told many times by his supporters, I don't matter because I am over 45 and a woman.

To me, he has a long way to go and this is not the year. Make him VP, but not President.

Audrey Hannifin

Denver, CO

I think we can put to rest the idea of a Obama/Clinton or Clinton/Obama ticket. From Senator Clinton's comments, I was left with the impression that if she did not get the nod, she would prefer McCain as President. As this article pointed out, Obama's Canadian gaffe was a legitimate hit. However, Democrats are not Republicans, and they do not like catfights between their candidates. However, since their policies are so closely aligned, catfights may be the only method they have of showing any differences.

They are both corporate Democrats, and I don't like either one of them! Since there doesn't seem to be any possibility of labor Democrats leading the party, I will go with Ralph Nader, who has a history of bucking corporations. Perhaps we will get our economic sovereignty back, along with jobs and industrial base. It will not happen with Republicans or a DLC-led Democratic Party.

Pervis J. Casey

Riverside, CA

Obama's advisor was 100 percent correct in her depiction of Hillary Clinton. Senator Clinton has run a campaign of incessant lies about her opponent, mud-slinging, and the politics of personal destruction and character assassination. Her win-at-all-costs behaviour is vile and insidious and she is determined to destroy Obama in order to win the White House, which she somehow thinks she is entitled to. Clinton most resembles Richard Nixon in her secretiveness, her enjoyment of tearing her opponents apart with lies, rumors and innuendos and her belief in revenge and enemies she must destroy. Next November a new President will be elected, and we are not going to solve the problems of healthcare, immigration, the economy, foreign relations and the environment if we make our opponents in America our enemies as Hillary Clinton does. Republicans and Democrats who disagree with her are not Al Qaeda. Electing Clinton will ensure polarization and divisiveness in our country beyond anything we have ever seen before.

Mark Jeffery Koch

Cherry Hill , NJ

Hillary is playing what every one knows as, and most politicians of both major parties have always practiced: gutter politics. Campaigns hire mercenaries such as Rove (I forget the name of the guy who ran George senior's campaign), Mark Penn, and/or do it themselves, e.g., Newt Gingrich, the Clintons etc. Except for the political mafia hired by campaigns specifically for their skills as political thugs, to the rest of us politics of personal destruction of the opponent is exhausting; the natural reaction is to turn away from politics. You wonder why so few people vote in the elections! Of course, that plays in the hands of the same operatives: no one benefits from the absence of citizen participation and vigilance than those who do their best job behind peoples' back.

Hillary, in the quintessential Machiavellian style, used "as far as I know" to implant doubt about Obama's religious persuasion; used racism when needed; lied about the Obama camp's supposed underhanded assurance to Canada on NAFTA. Typical of her brand of politician, she denigrated the hard work and sacrifice of the mass movement of ordinary people who fought for civil rights, by implying that the credit is due to President Johnson. She implied Obama's inability to take that phone call at 2 in the morning (while she does so only after she took the time to put on her makeup properly and dress-up in her yellow jacket) etc. The press never challenges the notion that just because someone lived in the White House and went to a conference in Beijing does not make her an expert on domestic and international affairs. I still do not know what her "achievements" are!

Last Tuesday night while reporting on the election results, Norah O'Donnell of MSNBC said that an exit poll in Ohio showed that those who said "race matters" in who they chose to vote for voted eight out of ten for Clinton. The press never criticized her based on this important evidence of how she played fear-mongering and the race card! She still refuses to make public her tax returns. Does she not realize how the Republicans will use similar dirty tricks she is using against Obama now, if she is the nominee? Maybe they will not: she has, in the last day or two, implied that she would rather McCain win the election than Obama. If Obama wins, she will probably join McCain as VP, who knows. Her hunger for power does not seem to have any limitations.

I am not an expert on predictions, and do not know where all of this will end up. But, at least in this brief moment, Obama tried to introduce civil discourse in American politics, something I have not seen in this country for the last forty years I have lived here. It is because of this mode of practicing politics--not the nuance differences in his policies compared to that of Hillary--that has encouraged multitudes to engage in politics, in a way never seen in this country! I have no way of knowing if this will have any permanent impact on practice of politics. My hunch is that denigrating of this style of politics by self-serving, greedy, corrupt and fundamentally anti-democratic politicians such as the Clintons will alienate even more citizens than ever.

M. Siddique

Chevy Chase, MD

"And Obama has been fair game for some of Clinton's attacks: on NAFTA, for instance..." Better not fall behind the curve in that NAFTAgate coverage.

Nice to know that The Nation would join in on the bread & circuses arena for the political assassination of Obama to benefit the right's nomination of Clinton as their nominee, while war hawk Clinton is given free rein and political cover to destroy the hopes of the left--without accountability, without question, without examination--and call that democracy fair and square. I don't know what country you've been living in recently.

Raphaelle del Vecchio

Trenton, NJ

Great article. Well balanced, fair and accurate. I do have one critique. Your comment about Obama and "NAFTA-gate," while pointed, neglects the fact that the even never happened. It was a lie and a smear. It was manufactured. Read Paul Loeb at HuffPost and this at DailyKos.

As I see it, a corollary to your arguement is this: For the good of the party, whoever the loser is, has to not only endorse but throw his support behind whoever is nominated. If we assume, based on the results of the SUSA poll, that Obama is the best candidate for swing states (see here, and a better numbers crunch here), and that he is up almost 600,000 in the popular vote and over 100 in pledged delegates, he will be the presumptive nominee. Therefore, it is up to HRC to back him ASAP.

Let's play it safe and give them until May. Have the "re-do" in Michican and Florida in May. Hillary needs to cut whatever backchannel deals she can before that vote (Obama too). The second that vote is decided, the loser has to convince their supporters to get behind the winner. Anything less than 110 percent confidence in the nominee by the runner-up would be disastrous. Really, it needs to be along the lines of " A vote for _____ is a vote for me, and everything we have fought for. It is a vote for your country, and your future. _______ is the strongest candidate for our future and I will back _____ with everything I have."

However, assuming Barak is the winner, this is only possible if HRC refrains from going negative and relying on scorched-earth politics. The next week will tell us her true intentions and reasons for running. Is it the good of the country or "you owe me" that is fueling her drive?

Marco McFarren
http://am4lib.blogpsot.com

Kawasaki, Kanagawa, Japan

I thought the Canadian government had come forward to explain that it was the Clinton campaign that had reached out to them to say that their message of NAFTA should be taken with a "grain of salt." I hate to see Obama charged with the exact things the Clinton campaign is guilty of. I would love it if there were more reporting on the court case coming up in CA concerning Clinton fundraising as well as the donations from Rezko's cohorts that went to Clinton. I do not think Obama will bring these issues to the fore, and by not doing so, the situation is so deeply unfair and rewarding to low tactics like those being taken by the Clinton campaign. These tactics are heart-breaking. And precedent-setting. And I think you could bring awareness to the need to stop them.

Jen Baker

Charleston, WV

These primary turnouts for Obama are really not about Obama but a groundswell of a people's movement that wants to bring government back to its promise of for the people, of the people and by the people. Democracy has not really won in so many decades, I have lost count. When we thought we were voting for hope and change with Bill Clinton, he squandered his credibility with a Democratic House and a Democratic Senate by being wishy-washy on one thing after another. From Lani Guinier, gays in the military, welfare reform and the omnibus crime bill, Bill Clinton moved the party so to the right that the lines blurred between Democrats and Republicans. He postured himself as a new kind of corporate Democrat and marginalized the progressive wing of the Democratic Party.

In this election cycle, the people are coming together to bring this party back to its promise of rights of workers, women's issues, civil rights and a push back on xenophobia, homophobia and anti-intellectualism. But that is not Hillary stands for. She is still tied to special interests and is much beholden to the Israel lobby that will prevent any settlement in the Middle East.

Given her conduct in the past few days--matter of fact, from the time the primary season started--there is no doubt in my mind that Hillary would rather destroy the Democratic Party than lose to a younger and much charismatic Obama who has displayed his skills in bringing disparate people together in a workable coalition. I need not itemize the sleazy way in which she continuously demonizes her opponent, from his religion to his youth to his experience and to his patriotism. In short order, she has taken on the mantle of the GOP sleaze machine that has worked so effectively in the past and which did work for her in the short run.

I am afraid that Hillary has set herself on a path to destroy Democrats, democracy and ultimately the will of the people. If she cannot win, she wants to change the rules, and if that does not work, I am convinced that we will all get up one morning and learn that she has become the running mate of John McCain.

Amy Laly

Seattle, WA

I don't agree with your description of Obama's fuzziness on NAFTA. He has never talked tough about scrapping NAFTA. When asked in one of the debates whether he was willing to scrap it, he explicitly said that he was confident that it would not have come to that. What he said was that he was serious about was strengthening the social clauses for the protection of labor and environment. He says that he has criticized NAFTA for a very long time for its weak social clauses, and he rightly claims that Bill Clinton is responsible for that weakness.

Now, if you read the Goolsbee memo--and please note that we have no reason to disbelieve Goolsbee's claim that he has been misquoted, as we are dealing with diplomats on the other side of questionable integrity--Goolsbee states unequivocally that Obama is interested in strengthening the social clauses in NAFTA.

Only if he had said that Obama is not sincere about strengthening the social clauses could Obama have been accused of double-dealing. It's time for the media to stop being the megaphones for Clinton's distortions.

You then write, in understatement:"Through its fearmongering over terrorism and national security and by taking advantage of smear campaigns against Obama's patriotism, race and religion, the Clinton campaign has already sunk fairly low." Much more needs to be said here: Clinton campaign has indeed played on both fears that Obama cannot be trusted to be a red-blooded American and prejudices against blacks. It's not that Clinton says anti-black things; it's that she has to count on an anti-black context for her negative campaigning to work.

For example, what does the image of innocent, angelic white children asleep mean, when put in the context of the charge that Obama cannot protect them? We are told that Obama's inexperience in foreign policy will allow a dead-in-the-night attack in an American bedroom community. Now, the image makes no sense, as terrorists are not targeting suburbia. The image relies on secondary associations. First, it relies on a fear that a stealth Muslim won't order a attack on incoming Muslim terrorists--that he won't protect us against them because he is at least partially sympathetic to them. That's why the children have to be white; otherwise, Obama may well order attacks on people who would attack children who look like his daughters.

One is called on to supply this hidden anti-Muslim rationale to make sense of the ad. Second, it plays on the fear that a black man is more of a menace to suburban white children than a source of security. If Clinton cannot count on people to supply these meanings to the ad, it simply doesn't work.

The ad claims Clinton's experience with other foreign leaders would matter if the security of US children were threatened in the middle of the night. But that makes no sense. That would not be a time for consulation and diplomacy butfor swift counter-terrorist action. Here we rely on the experience and agility of our soldiers and security forces, not diplomatic résumés.

So why does this ad work for Clinton against Obama? I propose that the only way it works if she can deviously incite and count on her audience's worries about Obama's putative Islamic faith and blackness. Once those worries come into focus, the ad makes sense.

But there are more obvious examples. The laughable plagiarism charge made in the course of a debate in which her closing repeated one of her husband's old speeches almost verbatim and the claim that she, unlike Obama, actually does hard legislative work (rather than just give speeches) resonate because some white Americans already have racist suspicions about how intellectually substantive and hard-working a black man can be.

Clinton can claim innocence as to why such charges work for her, but it's a rather monstrous innocence.It is insane to make the plagiarism charge against a person who has written two books. The top-of-the-class Harvard Law School person can think creatively and write on his own.

And Obama has a legislative record that manifests hard work and political savvy--just as Clinton's does. Earned Income Tax Credits, government transparency laws, nuclear nonproliferation legislation, veteran's assistance, a very proud record of civil libertarian efforts (sometimes sabotaged by Clinton). No one is denying that Obama accomplished more at his age than Clinton had.

And his outspoken opposition to the use of cluster bombs against civilians and the Kyl Lieberman authorization for war against Iran... How courageous he has been, though he could not make the vote because it was rescheduled at the last minute. But I don't see how anyone seriously doubts that he would have voted "no" along with many other Democratic Senators. Clinton voted yes. And Obama has gone on to make very risky statements in favor of full bilateral talks with Iran.

But Clinton can count on the charge of "all talk, no substance" sticking because this is what some Americans already believe about black men (I would say that the problem is severe in some of the old white working-class bastions in the Rustbelt and in poor rural areas). You can say it's not her fault, but she is playing to the prejudiced crowd. She's not rising above it.

Also, and most importantly, her hesitation about whether Obama is a Muslim--and this from a person who has attended church with him--also shows that she is willing to appeal to the extant prejudice that a Muslim can't really be a loyal American and that all Muslims are just undercover John Walker Lindhs.

It's the JFK Catholic problem many times magnified.

Again, that she trotted out Robert Johnson in South Carolina to suggest sinister implications from Obama's drug use twenty-five years ago shows that she is willing to go low, very low. There is also some evidence that she has cast shadows and darkened-up Obama's face in some of her attack ads.

A.L. Hartal

Walnut Creek, CA