see now why its worth it to nominate her? its worth it to nominate her and shove her down their throats just because it would piss these guys off! But instead we won't stand up to these guys, we'll nominate someone who looks and sounds similar to them, someone who WON'T piss them off. A "republican looking" democrat, a white southern former governor or senator who is anchored to the center line. I say thats not the way to go. Lets find the best most liberal nominee, or most objectionable to them nominee, and force the polarization. These guys want to scare the democrats into not nominating our best candidates and nominating ones who they find less objectionable. Lets not let these cretins run the democratic party through their hateful responses.

I read those hateful posts and made a few efforts to point out the insanity of the monsters who spewed all that nasty sewage over Hillary wearing a cross.

I'm not of fan of Hillary, but it is terifying to see the hatred she engenders in the lunatic fringe -- the 35% who still think the chimp is the second coming and that we should nuke Iran, Iraq and France forthwith.

Based on the intensity of hatred and the irrationality of that crowd, I have no doubt that there will violence when they lose power.

In the far right wing, there is a great deal of blatant, even if not always visibily apparent, sexism. They see a woman who is powerful and could realistically be president-- Hillary Clinton is really the first female presidential candidate in our nation's history who will truly be viable-- and they feel threatened. These are people who do not want a woman to be their leader and hate women who seek powerful positiosn they think men should have.

...both "blatant" and not "visibly apparent"?

well yeah I should clarify. What I meant was that while the sexism (and racism) among many right wingers is not always visibily apparent, it is still blatantly there if you know what to look for. It is out in the open even if you don't see it. You just need to know what the code words are, how to read between the lines. There are many prominent democrats who are more liberal than Hillary. She's a devout christian who wears a cross and attends regular prayer meetings with a small group of other senators that includes republicans. There is no reason they should feel more threatened by her than by others more liberal like Feingold or Kerry. But they do. Why? There's only one reason why, which is she's a woman and she's powerful, and they don't like it.

Their intense hatred for her actually makes Hillary, in my book, a more potentially enticing candidate than she would be otherwise. Because in 2008 I want the GOP totally engaged, I want their best fight, I want to see the fear in their eyes as we beat them. If we give them John Edwards and he wins, they won't care much because while Edwards is a democrat, he's a white male southerner, like Bush and other powerful republicans,so they don't fear him. They'll take a republican as president, or at worst they'll accept a white, southern NASCAR MALE democrat. Anything else they'll fear. And we should want them to be afraid, because as democrats the best mandate we can possibly have is if we have beaten them giving their best, hardest fought, fight.

...you don't really have a problem with taking repug sentiment into account, as you stated above; rather, you want them to be as angry, inflamed and motivated as can be. Hence, Hillary.

Not sure that line of reasoning is going to fly.

I want them exposed! The problem in this country we have is that these right wing conservative gop politicians are racist, sexist, homophobics, and they manage to hide it. Look at a guy like Rick Santorum in Pennsylvania, as bigoted a guy as you'll ever see on Capital Hill. Yet he hides it, he hides his bigotry in plain sight by making the proper appearances, and avoiding blunt confrontations by using code language.

How do we bring guys like that out of the closet? How do we expose them for what they are? The answer I believe is to make them uncomfortable, to force them to show their true colors. If Hillary Clinton is the nominee, the whole world is going to see how sexist Santorum and the GOP hardliners are. They won't be able to hide it. They can barely hide it when they talk about her now. Just imagine if she was the nominee and in their faces everyday. Similarly, if Barack Obama lets say, were the nominee, the whole world would see how racist these hardliners are because ultimately they couldn't hide it campaigning openly against them.

The key to beating the republicans is to expose them for who and what they are, and the democrats cannot do that unless they bring out the fear inside these people.

First, thank you so much for taking the time to wallow through this garbage and provide some sort of analytical context. You really did provide a public service.

This really provides the readers of the NY political blogs with a vivid glimpse of what I would call the double digit IQ phalanx of the so-called "great right wing conspiricy". They represent the quintessence of "followers" who believe everything they are told on talk radio and right wing blogs and act upon all marchung orders with great alacrity. Who else are buying up Bill O'Reilly's latest piece of tripe in order to challenge the Woodward book for the #1 spot on the NYT Book Review list. (By the way, the powers that be on the left make similar use of their "followers" and keenly wish they had more at their disposal.)

In my view, these prople probably deserve to be pitied rather than feared. The real problem lies with the persons giving the orders - not the cannon fodder.

While some of the other commenters have stressed the "anti- Hillary" and "anti-women" issue, I think the key object of their ire is "anti-Clinton". Let us not forget all the venum that has been sprewed against Bill over the years. The key question here is: Why do they hate the Clintons?. The best answer I can come up with is that, for all of their often frustrating opportunism and muddled ideology, the Clintons have conveyed an effective message that has won over the middle of the road constituency that is most at stake. These are the people whom Gore and Kerry could not reach and who basically decided the last two elections. In going after the Clintons, the right wants to beat their most effective opponents. This is the real bottom line.

What these right wing gadflys have against the Clintons is they couldn't beat them. They couldn't keep Bill Clinton from the white house, they couldn't get him out of the white house. They tried everything, up to and including trashing their marriage, their family and everything else. They even tried impeaching him. Yet Clinton got re-elected anyway. Nothing breeds hate and contempt like success. As stated, there are other candidates they should be more opposed to philosophically than Hillary, but they HATE her. And she's a woman. The right wing can't truly flex their muscles when there's someone out there they couldn't beat.

Wrong. The right did beat Clinton, in the midterms of 1994 and in every Congressional election since. It's only today that we're even seriously considering taking back the Congress, which we had owned for four decades prior to that.

This, of course, after they beat both Clintons on universal healthcare (despite overwhelming public support for it), and him specifically on gays in the military. The first half of Clinton's first term was a disaster on every level, politically speaking, and we walked over a cliff in 1994.

One might add that Bill didn't really do much to reverse that Congressional defeat, even in 1998, when we should have taken back at least the House over the impeachment debacle. This because he was more concerned with surviving impeachment than anything else. He even legitimized Newt Gingrich with his policy of triangulation. He survived - what, is that a victory? When we didn't even capitalize on the undeniable successes of his Presidency by recapturing Congress from a bunch of nutjobs? That's victory? What does defeat look like?

The Clinton victories consisted of a win in 1992 in a three-way race, losing both houses of Congress two years later, carrying a Presidential plurality in 1996, while not regaining Congress, not regaining it in 1998 or 2000, either, and getting Hillary elected to the Senate in a very blue state while doing little for Al Gore. Even their home state of Arkansas went red.

The Democratic Party was never in worse shape than when Bill Clinton left office. We even lost the majority of governorships and state legislatures, for crying out loud. That withering of the party that Howard Dean is reversing? I blame Bill Clinton.

So from the perspective of the Democratic Party, the Clinton legacy is a very mixed blessing. This because the Clintons, often enough, have worked for no one but themselves - just ask John Kerry. Can anyone articulate a vision of governance that Hillary wants to implement? Other than sitting in the Oval Office, that is?

I worry that we're going into 2008 with a weak, damaged candidate motivated by nothing more than a desire to exercise power. Guzzling the Kool-Aid about "Clinton victories" can't gloss over that stark fact. Even in New York, Spitzer is running ten points ahead of Hillary in the polls. This despite the obvious fact that her opponent, republican whatshisname, is a barking nutjob and a philandering sleaze who put his own family on the government payroll while fucking his secretary.

So please, while I'm eminently sympathetic to any Democrat who gets attacked by those nutjobs, let's dispense with this chit-chat about "Clinton victories". Try to take some integrity and historical accuracy with your Kool-Aid.

Oh they beat the Democrats while the Clintons were in the White House, but that doesn't mean they beat the Clintons. They (the right wing) don't feel that they did beat them, because 1. Clinton did not get kicked out office, 2. He got not only elected but re-elected, 3. Hillary is now in the Senate, 4. Hillary's about to run for President. That means the Clintons are still out there. They have not gone away, they have not been silenced, they still have power and influence, and THAT equates to their not having been beaten. We're talking by their standards, not your standards or mine. Theirs. Which is to say total defeat. It literally BURNS them up that the Clintons are still around.

It also burns them up that Hillary wears a cross, because in their view, the GOP is pro-God and the Democratic Party is anti-God, so the sight of Hillary to them is blasphemous. To them its like the devil wearing a cross.