John McCain Smiles as Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama Snipe

In the Hillary Clinton-Barack Obama dispute, there is plenty of blame to go around. Both sides have sniped at the other too much instead of articulating a vision for America and in what direction they would like to take the country. However, the Obama camp, lead by super-spinmeister David Axelrod, has been more successful in spinning their version of the feud into the national consciousness through a compliant media. Take for instance, the Bill Clinton brouhaha in the state of South Carolina. Axelrod, himself a former political reporter for the Chicago Tribune, tarred the former President as just short of a card-carrying member of the Ku Klux Klan.

All Bill Clinton said was that the race wasn't over, after all Jesse Jackson carried the Palmetto State twice, or words to that effect. Clinton likened Obama's talk of all of America, Democrats and Republicans, united, sitting around a campfire holding hands and singing of teaching the world to sing in perfect harmony to a "fairy tale". I know, that is a paraphrase, but for that the 42nd President of the United States, called the "first black President" by Chris Rock and Toni Morrison, has been constantly flogged in the national media for "playing the race card". It has been stated as fact by Axelrod and Richmond, VA Mayor and former Virginia Governor Douglas Wilder on such shows as CBS' Face The Nation.

Wilder even went so far as to predict riots that would make the Democratic Convention in Chicago in 1968 look tame if Obama didn't win the democratic nomination due to the Superdelegates going for Hillary Clinton. It came across almost as much of a threat as it was a prediction to this viewer. The national media chose to overlook the comment. As Dana Carvey's "church lady" character used to say on Saturday Night Live: How convenient!

It's not that Hillary Clinton has been totally innocent in the flap. The problem is that the national media seems so enthralled by Barack Obama that they have become more cheerleaders than newshounds, let alone watchdogs. Obama talks vaguely of "CHANGE we can believe in" without revealing any specifics, out of one side of his mouth, and denouncing the "Clinton Machine" out of the other. Of course, Obama doesn't tell us his puppet master Axelrod has Chicago Mayor Richard Daley as one of his clients. Ironic that.

Obama furrows his high brow and speaks of how the nation does not need "triangulation" in a thinly veiled slap at Clinton. Triangulation being the Clintonian tactic of preempting criticism by opponents by anticipating their arguments and beating them to the punch, among other things. Then "Barack Of Ages" proceeds to...talk of working with the Republicans, how the GOP has had all the good ideas the last 20 years, what a swell guy Reagan was, etc. All the things he just accused Clinton of doing, in short. Barack Obama has shamelessly stolen from Deval Patrick speeches, without giving his buddy credit. He has shamelessly stolen from Clinton's 1992 campaign against George H. W. Bush, even down to the way he uses his lawyer wife in the campaign.

Clinton, however had the good sense not to use Hillary as a "hatchet man" as Obama has done with his wife Michelle. For her part, Hillary Clinton has acted as if she has been upstaged in a race for high school Homecoming Queen at times, losing to the new transfer student. Somewhere, John McCain and the Republicans have to be smiling. Whichever Democrat wins, almost surely Obama, they are going to be softened up for a united GOP. No matter how much Rush Limbaugh and other members of the Far Right attack McCain, they will be on board with him in the fall.

When shadowy 527 groups start hammering Barack Obama's middle name of Hussein and playing up his wife's statement about being "proud of her country for the first time in her adult life" and the national media tires of their Obama infatuation, will Obama fight back or will he be like a Dukakis-Kerry deer in the headlights?