Osama bin Laden Doesn't Even Have a 2002 Speech Going for Him

Not that it comes as a terrible shock, but we're beginning to see that Hillary Clinton doesn't respond well when something she considers rightfully hers is taken away. Although I've been leaning toward Obama, I've always said that I thought Hillary would be a strong candidate in the fall if she won the nomination, and that I'd have no problem supporting her.

I'm having second thoughts.

There's no question that the right-wing smear against Barack Obama will be far worse than whatever the Clinton campaign is (so far, at least) willing to dish out, but I see no reason that the Clintonistas need to give it a test drive. We've already seen the John McCain talking points, and now the Chicago Tribune's political blog, The Swamp, is reporting that Hillary's phone bank can't quite tell Barack Obama and Osama bin Laden apart. Jim Oliphant quotes a Cleveland lawyer:

[The Hillary phone bank caller] then launches into a two-minute spiel on all the very specific initiatives and proposals Hillary has put forth on health care, the war in Iraq, etc., etc. At the end of her spiel, she says, "And we haven't heard anything that specific from Osama bin Laden."

I say, "You did not just say that." She replies, "I'm sorry . . . just a slip of the tongue." She then thanks me for my time and encourages me to vote for Hillary on Tuesday.

Oliphant's summation points out the high wire on which newspaper blogs are trying to inch along. He's a newspaper journalist who shouldn't be offering opinion in a news story (not that this story doesn't speak eloquently for itself), but surely he can do better than this: "Are the dirty tricks ramping up as we get down to the wire?"

I don't know. Ya think?