What about stories like this (www.nytimes.com/.../03exelon.html) that are bound to appear with increasing frequency as Wonderboy gets a little scrutiny?

It will fade as an issue because it is a story based on legislative compromise, which makes the eyes of even the most ardent of political-junkies glaze.

Should he be smacked with the possibly dubious nature of his comments in Iowa?  Probably.  Has the NY Times just accomplished this?  Yes.  Will anybody outside the Clinton campaign think this is worth parsing for any kind of time?  No.  Will this be a significant campaign issue?  Probably not.  

Now, how he handles the scrutiny is the actual issue.  If he handles this as deftly as the Clintons usually handle critiques, than yes, it is a problem.  If he figures out how to deal with these honestly, forthrightly, and quickly, than they simply disapear after a few newscycles.  A little bit of candor goes a long way.

Given the slime coated nature of his competitors my guess is that "wonderboy" will be just fine. The high-mindedness Hillary supporters are so fond of mocking Edwards and Obama for is the only reason she's still a viable candidate, Anyone willing to fight using their tactics would have finished the Kazakhstan twins off months ago.  

Saying Barack isn't perfect will never magically transform Hillary Clinton into a person who didn't talk her husband into letting 300,000 Bosnians die because saving them would have been politically inconvenient.

It is a story about compromise, but it is also a story about candor. And yes it is Obama who lacks candor.

“Asked why Mr. Obama had cited it as an accomplishment while campaigning for president, the campaign noted that after the senator introduced his bill, nuclear plants started making such reports on a voluntary basis. The campaign did not directly address the question of why Mr. Obama had told Iowa voters that the legislation had passed.”

Does this mean Obama is any different from every other politician? No! That’s exactly the point Clinton supporters have been making for weeks now. Just because he says he is different does not provide evidence that he is different. George Bush said he would be a “uniter not a divider” and a “compassionate conservative.” Was he? This story is about dispelling Obama’s myth that he can somehow make the sausage without grinding up pig parts. He plays the game just like the rest of them, and when stories like this start to multiply, they will undercut his only rationale for being the better candidate – that he can do it different.   You see Americans don’t like dishonesty, but they hate hypocrisy. And this speaks to the ultimate hypocrisy of the entire Obama premise. How about we pick the nominee we thing will be the best president? If Obama wants to be candid, he will tell us that politics is a dirty business, and that while he may wish otherwise, being a successful politician means doing dirty things (like lying to Iowa voters about a humbling legislative experience).  The lies are part of the game. The lie about this candidate is that he does not lie.

The story bothered me because it had shades of the whole Bush era let-industry-police-themselves thing. That mentality made Texas (by far) the filthiest state in the country with some of the worst public health statistics in history.  

It's done us alot of good since he's been President too right?  Not to get too John Edwards on us, but ask big coal, big pahrma, big food, big oil how much they enjoy regulating themselves.

It also bothered me because I am utterly fed up with spinelessness on the part of liberals.  The American people support us on the issues people, exactly when do we plan on acting on that?

Leglislative compromise is important, yes. I'd like to see more follow up.  How has the company changed since? Are the citizens who were impacted happy with the final results?

It didn't change my vote, but it bugged me alot. I hate to sounds so partisan and all but: this is exactly the sort of right wing boot licking I've endured from the fine Senator from New York for years now.  I'm done.

The question has never been what politics requires, but rather what kind of landscape our politics will be staged on,  Obama clearly believes that it should be stagged in the light of day, and the Clinton's clearly believe that it should happen in the dark. We'd have universal heathcare if Hillary hadn't tried to do it in the dark and we'd have a sane energy policy if Cheney hadn't been able to do what he did in the dark. Obama does not walk on water. However the basic premise of his campaign is get involved, stay involved, keep us honest.  Hillary meanwhile takes a vote for me then go home while I take care of everything stance.

Maybe  you disagree, but I don't see how chronic disengagement could be good for a democracy.

Hillary tried her best and it didn't work - she made big mistakes, yes, but I'm just not sure that had she somehow managed it differently, that the outcome would have been any different. None of us are.  

She deserves to be held accountable for her mistakes in the process yes, but in all fairness - the country (including all its elements) were not ready.

I have no problem with compromise - tend to value it actually, but not out of fear of being called a liberal. Fear has not been Obama's modus operendi in any other instance I've studied, it would be out of character.

I do not expect perfection - I do demand backbone at this point in the game.  

eweiss: "How about we pick the nominee we thing will be the best president?"

How about we pick the nominee that can generate so much enthusiasm and turnout that the Democratic party takes a commanding majority in both the House and the Senate and will be a reasonably good president?

Experience and command of the issues are important for a president, but not as important as votes in Congress.

The other thing that's interesting is that Al Gore/John Edwards will probably weigh in after Feb 5th if there's a tie...

"Conversely, it would have been much trickier for him to have several six- and eight-state primaries every week, since it would have been impossible to focus on one or two particular states but, unlike February 5, the press wouldn't keep giving him a pass." --Noam Scheiber

Noam:

the reason " Why the Clock May Favor Obama " is not that his strength as a candidate would increase the longer the race, but because of what you just just knowing or inadvertently said about: The media have given Obama a pass, in fact, a free ride, while hitting Hillary non-stop on anything, trivial or consequential, that she has done. Few candidates could withstand the onslaught that  has been directed at Hillary and not see their support erode. That is why Feb. 5 won't be coming a day too soon for the Hillary camp. The press and not the clock favors Obama.

Wandreycer1  said:

"Hillary tried her best and it didn't work - she made big mistakes, yes, but I'm just not sure that had she somehow managed it differently, that the outcome would have been any different. "

I love the use of the past tense in what sounds like an epitaph or a postmortem to a nomination contest that had already taken place and Hillary lost. This really goes to the bottom of the Obama candidacy: Its total lack of basis in reality and the apparent mindlessness of those who've joined the hype and hysteria of Obamamania. In the kool-aid-drimking world of Obamaland, they have already won the nomination and the presidency..

Telling voters that he passed a bill that he knew didn't pass and misrepresenting the nature of the bill itself speak to Obama's consciousness about what is real and what is wished for. There is a kind of wishfulness about a lot of what Obama does--like when he has gotten credit for both sides of an issue in the Illinois Senate by claiming that he accidentally hit the wrong button when he voted (6 times). It is similar to letting Rezko own half his home in order have the fantasy of something (the big house and yard) that he doesn't have in reality.

This wishfulness characterizes Obama's best speeches. But in general it is part of Obama's substitutioon of rhetoric for policy. The last time rhetoric was substituted for policy on such a grand scale was when George Bush used post-9/11 rhetoric to lead the nation into a war that had no basis in policy. The ratio of airy rhetoric to deep policy is the same for Obama, and it looks more and more like an established character trait.

dcshungu --

You may need to brush up on your reading comprehension/conversation following skills.  Wandreycer1 was talking about Hillary's failed push for universal healthcare in the early 90s (in response to arsonplus).

Thanks davies b.

Gee, dc, could it be that wendy used past tense because Hillary's health care failure happened in the past?  Besides, that sentence you quoted was in defense of Hillary. Read it again...in context of what was being discussed.  

For someone who's always nitpicking and slamming Obama, you are pretty thin-skinned with regards to the Clintons. And what is it about you and kool-aid, anyway?

Nice little event here at the Edward Jones Dome Convention Center in downtown St. Louis tonight, 20,000 people showed up to see Barack Obama.  Security was tight, Secret Service everywhere, one of them grabbed me as I tried to climb on a light stand, nice clean-cut young man.  Once again, the press was kept largely at bay, and away from the stage altogether.  Still photographers like myself were relegated to small sections of the two large press platforms, which were dominated by video cameras, I counted at least 25.  TV is getting very important now.

I think I got some good pictures, though I haven't yet had a chance to look at them. I got within 5 feet of Obama as he was leaving the event, so check my photo blog in a day or two for the pics. I'm going to need at least 24 hours to recuperate, because it was pretty hectic, and very exciting.  Pretty much the same message as in October, just a much much larger audience this time.  I can attest, the folks in St. Louis love Barack Obama.

Oh, and it's something I have only done one other time and I don't like to do it, but I just skip what his names posts. It's a waste of eyeball juice.

Time, the clock I guess, favors Obama because the more you know, the more impressed you are. That's why he won Iowa. If there had been more time in NH he would have won that too. Clinton, on the other hand, benefits from the uninformed voter who knows nothing other than that the economy was better under Bill. And that she's more "experienced" - and again, the more you learn of the two candidates' accomplishments, the worse it looks for HRC. She doesn't wear well except for the truly cynical and/or self-delusional types. Or women who just don't care about anything but gender, like Gloria Steinem and that NY NOW woman whose name I forgot, and Erica Jong.

Here's why Obama's apparent Missouri win is such a big deal, if it holds: It goes a long way

This may or may not be the conventional wisdom, but I figured I should just say a few words about what's