From Stephanie in Westchester:

I am absolutely sickened by the way both Clintons are shaming the Democratic Party by the low level on which they are conducting their campaign--and I emphasize their.

I think their message of two-for-the-price-of-one in his first presidential campaign (which seems to be replaying today in reverse) was a subversion of feminism (not to mention not provided for in the Constitution). I think claiming that having been the wife of the president is a qualifying experience to be president is equally anti-feminist and demeaning to women like Nancy Pelosi, who've made it on their own. I think her bungling of the first real opportunity this country had for anything approaching universal health care was the result of her own arrogance, secretiveness and naive and self-serving assumption that she could somehow position the proposal so as not to turn the health care industry totally against her husband. And while it may have been a doomed battle then, it might, but for the way she conducted it, have been a noble one and a template for today, rather than a fiasco of naivete and incompetence that made it impossible to return it to the agenda for another 16 years.

Further, I think Bill Clinton pulled the Democratic Party too far to the center-right and worry that, since she is allowing him such a loud voice in her campaign, she would allow him too loud a voice in the Oval Office. I think that she has not been forthright about her position on the bankruptcy bill, which is one of the most punishing things to have been visited on people struggling to survive financially.

And I don't know of anything concrete she-- or her husband-- the so-called "first black president"-- has done to positively affect the lives of African-Americans (look up Marion Wright Edelman on welfare reform) that would compare with Obama's community organizing on the south side of Chicago with followers of Saul Alinsky. And yet she has the chutzpah to accuse him of talking about change instead of actually doing something to make change happen!

(See excerpts from Washington Post below).

"Alinsky had died, but a group of his disciples hired Barack Obama, a 23-year-old Columbia University graduate, to organize black residents on the South Side, while learning and applying Alinsky's philosophy of street-level democracy. The recruiter called the $13,000-a-year job "very romantic, until you do it."
"Today, as Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton face off for the Democratic presidential nomination, their common connection to Alinsky [she wrote a paper on him at Wellesley] is one of the striking aspects of their biographies. Obama embraced many of Alinsky's tactics and recently said his years as an organizer gave him the best education of his life. Clinton's interest was more intellectual -- she turned down the job offer [from Alinsky]-- and she has said little about Alinsky since their association became a favorite subject of conservative critics during her husband's presidency." (emphasis mine)