Hillary Smackdown

One of my greatest fears is the thought that Hillary Clinton could once again take up residence in the White House. Not too long ago there appeared to be a good chance she could make it. She may yet, but last week Barack Obama took her down a notch.

I will summarize in case you missed the news. Hollywood mogul David Geffen, who was a solid supporter of Bill Clinton, recently joined the Obama camp. Hillary let her displeasure be known through intermediaries. Geffen fired back with some biting comments about both Clintons to a New York Times gossip columnist. Instead of laughing off the story and letting it die, the Hillary camp allowed it to blow up into a major story. Why? Peggy Noonan has a theory.

Mrs. Clinton has never gone after a fellow Democrat quite the way she's going after Mr. Obama, and it's an indication of how threatened she is not only by his candidacy but, one suspects, his freshness. He makes her look like yesterday. He makes her look like the old slash-and-burn. I doubted he could do her serious damage. Now I wonder. MORE

Bill Kristol also has an interesting column about this. The race has a long way to go and Hillary is by no means out of it. Nor is Obama a shoo-in for the nomination. Kristol talks about a scenario where Clinton and Obama destroy each other and Al Gore swoops in to pick up the pieces. It could happen.

Meanwhile today's New York Times has a story about how none of the Republican candidates are proving very attractive to Christian Right leaders. I can easily believe it - none of them are very attractive to me, either. Any of them are probably preferable to Hillary.