We Only Kill Our Own

Eric Boehlert has a long fact-filled dissection of a growing urban myth, much like the one that Gore supposedly claimed to have invented the internet, at Media Matters:

The press insists Sen. Hillary Clinton's 2002 vote to authorize the war in Iraq could doom her 2008 campaign. But a new, largely ignored, poll indicates Democrats don't much care about her vote. In fact, most Democrats don't even think the vote was a mistake. Reporters and pundits though, remain committed to the story.

And not only reporters and pundits, but bloggers. These continuing demands for abject kowtowing are an offensive double-standard I've written about before. Boehlert deals in facts, comparing claims to actual events. Read it all.

There are plenty of valid reasons someone might prefer another candidate to Hillary. This double-standard B.S. is not one of them. I'd rather see her, Edwards, Obama, et al., denounced over their enabling of Iran attacks, than over this demand that she metaphorically stand in the snow in a hair shirt outside Canossa like Henry IV.


The Pope was wrong to demand that; the cut-off-your-own-nose leftists squawking at her to crucify herself over this now are just as wrong. (I believe this even though I would have voted the other way at the time.) Fortunately, this poll indicates the real Democratic primary voters have more sense.