Whoever wins the nomination will now be open to Republican attacks. If it is Obama, the GOP will claim that anything they say about his religion, his youth, or his race is no worse than what Senator Clinton’s campaign did back in the primaries. If Clinton is the nominee, expect to hear an endless series of attacks on her for her racist style of campaigning. In short it’s a no win situation for the Democratic Party, one they should never have allowed to happen. Sadly, it’s probably too late now to prevent any further damage to the candidates themselves, and to the party brand in November. And you can bet this will affect other races down ticket, particularly if Senator Clinton wins. Already many African American bloggers are saying that Clinton has lost a lot of support in the the black community. The Republicans won’t need to suppress the black vote all that much if many of them decide to stay home come the Fall because of what is being done to Obama now.

And that would be the real tragedy of the Clinton/Obama race wars.

Since StevenD posted this comment, both the Clinton and Obama campaigns have offered to tone it down. As far as I’m concerned, that can’t happen soon enough or fast enough. But I fear the damage has already been done to both candidates, and whomever wins the nomination.

At the end of 2005, a tally was done of the number of diaries, and the diarists whose diaries made the Recommended List, which only holds 8 diaries at a time and requires a very high number of recommendations to get there. Out of nearly 12,000 diarists, I ranked #2, behind the brainy Parisian energy and finance expert, Jerome A Paris.

But, truth be told, by the end of 2005, I’d learned what I could write that would guarantee my placement in the recommended list. At the time, I wrote story after story about torture, Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, Bucca, extraordinary rendition. It was a cause for me. From time to time, I ventured beyond. One weekend, I wrote a diary about a Democratic candidate for Congress who personally was opposed to abortion but who supported a woman’s right to choose. I thought him an example of “big tent” Democratic politics. As long as he wouldn’t vote to deny a woman’s right to choose, I had no problem with his personal view of abortion. I was viciously attacked. There is, undeniably, a rigidity and extremism in far left politics just as there is in far right politics. I want nothing to do with either extreme. They both talk like Jay. And they make their attacks personal, without any self-awareness that 1) they are not being rational and 2) they are harming their own POV.

But, Reagan — just like George W. Bush — “was astonishingly successful in his plan to paralyze the federal government.”

In the long term , this will be the tragedy of GWB reign of destruction. I was working for a fed agency targeted by the Reagan minions in 1981. They did a lot of damage for about two years. But when RR’s popularity waned a bit and after the 1982 elections they dialed back somewhat their assault on Federal Agencies. GWB, on the other hand, has gone full bore for 8 years to corrupt and disable our federal government. It will take decades to fix.

Hey! I’m just saying…