Are you concerned that he has negative ads or that his ads are petty?  They're different things.

First of all, I don't think his mild messaging - again, Tuzla-gate offered up far richer grounds for character assassination had that been a goal - qualifies as negative in that sense. Certainly not compared to what could have been run against her; I'm still waiting for the ads about how they lost Congress in 1994.

What you're asking for is unilateral disarmament. Fine. But what I don't get is what Hillary's slimefest has to do with her claims to competence or to being "ready on day one". Can we deduce from her messaging that she's thrown that overboard?

...if that's what he's in fact doing. The Clintons have been allowed to get away with quite a bit by the way of negative campaigning, with no real price being extracted for it except by the watchdogs in the blogosphere. Maybe, if it's demonstrated to them that there is a price to be paid for their atrocious messaging, they'll take a step back and consider other options.

Oh crap....

There are diaries on this very site that decry his ability to effectively fight off the GOP slime machine... but then he goes negative against Clinton, as a result of numerous negative attacks on Him by her, and Clinton supporters now cry foul...?  

You can have "new politics" only after he is elected.  Until then it's old-or-bust.

Kind of like "unity".  You can have unity just as soon as everyone adopts his viewpoint.  Until then: division, condescension and alienation.

Kind of like "talking about the issues that matter."  We'll get to that just as soon as he finishes lecturing us about the need to talk about the issues that matter.  Any day now.

"His central argument has been: vote for me because this is a movement, something new and positive and different."

How do think it became a movement?  Do you think it just began as some transformative enterprise by happenstance?

He has been talking about issues throughout.  He has a website that lists both his accomplishments on issues and his policies for when he is president.  It' www.barackobama.com; just check out the issues section.  He has given countless speeches on a variety of issues from foreign policy, to energy, to race.

This is by far one of the dumbest diatribes against Obama.

In the same way Gore lost Florida...

Bush got more delegates from Florida in 2000 just like Obama in Texas

"He has said he will stand with the muslims if there is a either or situation."

Link? This is an outrageous accusation--hide-worthy, if you don't back it up.

You said Harrisburg and Pennsylvania. Did you mean Philly? As someone outside that market I'm interested.

He called the attempt to play guilt by vague association "ridiculous".

What kind of answer SHOULD he have given?

Read professor Ayers' response to the claim he said he "regretted not planting more bombs." Tell me if you think it was an accurate depiction of what he said.

From "Clarifying the Facts--a Letter to the NYT by Bill Ayers"

September 15, 2001
To The Editors--

In July of this year Dinitia Smith asked my publisher if she might interview me for the New York Times on my forthcoming book, Fugitive
Days. From the start she questioned me sharply about bombings, and each time I referred her to my memoir where I discussed the culture of
violence we all live with in America, my growing anger in the 1960's about the structures of racism and the escalating war, and the complex, sometimes extreme and despairing choices I made in those
terrible times.

Smith's angle is captured in the Times headline: "No regrets for a love of explosives" (September 11, 2001). She and I spoke a lot about
regrets, about loss, about attempts to account for one's life. I never said I had any love for explosives, and anyone who knows me
found that headline sensationalistic nonsense. I said I had a thousand regrets, but no regrets for opposing the war with every ounce of my strength. I told her that in light of the indiscriminate murder of millions of Vietnamese, we showed remarkable restraint, and that while we tried to sound a piercing alarm in those years, in fact we
didn't do enough to stop the war.

Smith writes of me: "Even today, he `finds a certain eloquence to bombs, a poetry and a pattern from a safe distance,' he writes." This
fragment seems to support her "love affair with bombs" thesis, but it is the opposite of what I wrote:

We'll bomb them into the Stone Age, an unhinged American politician had intoned, echoing a gung-ho, shoot-from-the-hip general... each
describing an American policy rarely spoken so plainly. Boom. Boom. Boom. Poor Viet Nam.

Almost four times the destructive power Florida... How could we understand it? How could we take it in? Most important, what should we do about it? Bombs away. There is a certain eloquence to bombs, a poetry and a pattern from a safe distance. The rhythm of B-52s dropping bombs over Viet Nam, a
deceptive calm at 40,000 feet as the doors ease open and millennial eggs are delivered on the green canopy below, the relentless thud of
indiscriminate destruction and death without pause on the ground.

Nothing subtle or syncopated. Not a happy rhythm.
Three million Vietnamese lives were extinguished. Dig up Florida and throw it into the ocean. Annihilate Chicago or London or Bonn. Three
million--each with a mother and a father, a distinct name, a mind and a body and a spirit, someone who knew him well or cared for her or
counted on her for something or was annoyed or burdened or irritated by him; each knew something of joy or sadness or beauty or pain. Each
was ripped out of this world, a little red dampness staining the earth, drying up, fading, and gone. Bodies torn apart, blown away,
smudged out, lost forever.

I wrote about Vietnamese lives as a personal American responsibility, then, and the hypocrisy of claiming an American innocence as we
constructed and stoked an intricate and hideous chamber of death in Asia.

Clearly I wrote and spoke about he export of violence and the government's love affair with bombs. Just as clearly Dinitia Smith
was interested in her journalistic angle and not the truth. This is not a question of being misunderstood or "taken out of context," but
of deliberate distortion.

Some readers apparently responded to her piece, published on the same day as the vicious terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, by
associating my book with them. This is absurd. My memoir is from start to finish a condemnation of terrorism, of the indiscriminate
murder of human beings, whether driven by fanaticism or official policy.

It begins literally in the shadow of Hiroshima and comes of age in the killing fields of Southeast Asia. My book criticizes the American obsession with a clean and distanced violence, and the
culture of thoughtlessness and carelessness that results form it.

We are now witnessing crimes against humanity in our own land on an unthinkable scale, and I fear that we might soon see innocent people
in other parts of the world as well as in the U.S. dying and suffering in response.

All that we witnessed September 11--the awful carnage and pain, the heroism of ordinary people--may drive us mad with grief and anger, or
it may open us to hope in new ways. Perhaps precisely because we have suffered we can embrace the suffering of others and gather the
necessary wisdom to resist the impulse to lash out randomly. The lessons of the anti-war movements of the 1960s and 70s may be more
urgent now than ever.

Bill Ayers
Chicago, IL

I was exaggerating, of course, but surely you get my point. In an age of terrorism, global warming, and every other macro threat that demands immediate action, very few will care about tiny, radical sects from the 60's. The fact that these folks have been rehabilitated shows that no one cares anymore.

Surely you cannot think this is a winning issue.

Yes, he has spent a lot of money in Pennsylvania getting out his message.  We will find out tomorrow if it works to overcome her advantages in the state.

Exactly.  Money well spent.  What else is he supposed to do with all that cash?  Buy donuts?
Or maybe he could hire a crackjack ace like Mark Penn:

" Nearly half of Clinton's debt in March is money owed to the firm of her demoted former chief strategist, Mark Penn. The report shows that the campaign owes $4.6 million to Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates. The campaign already has paid the firm $14 million, including $3 million in March for polling and direct mail."

How's that for money management.  Clinton supporters have to feel some regret about the way this campaign was run.  With an economy in shambles (issue #1), who are we going to trust to run the country?  Best head-to-head measure is playing out right before our very eyes.

WASHINGTON (AP) - "Barack Obama began April with a 5-to-1 cash advantage over a debt- saddled Hillary Rodham Clinton" (snip)

"Financial reports the Democratic presidential candidates filed with the Federal Election Commission on Sunday show Clinton had $10.3 million in debt at the start of the month and only about $9 million cash on hand for the primaries. Obama reported having $42 million for the primary."

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id= D906BP2O2&show_article=1

You know nothing about him, then. One of the gripes I have with him is that he doesn't get riled up enough. I actually have seen him operate for a long time. He bears no grudges and he is the farthest thing from "passive-aggressive." He likes to get stuff done. That's his focus.