Notes from Australia: Pennsylvania primary puts US politics to the test
Andrew Sullivan
The Australian
EVEN after all the hype, this week's vote in Pennsylvania will be a watershed primary election.
This isn't because it could determine whether Hillary Clinton's campaign continues on its brutal, nihilistic path towards the destruction of the most promising figure in the Democratic Party since Kennedy.
It isn't because it's been an age since the last primary vote and every nasty toxin in American culture has been drawn to the surface by the Clinton poultice.
It isn't even because Pennsylvania is an indisputably important and large state that any Democrat needs to win in November.
It is because the Clintons haveturned Pennsylvania into a microcosm of what they think the general election will be in November.
And the Clintons are running as the Rove Republicans. If they fail to destroy Barack Obama as effectively as Karl Rove -- George W. Bush's master of the dark arts -- destroyed Al Gore and John Kerry in 2000 and 2004, with tactics just as brutal but even more personal, then they will have driven American politics to a critical point. They will have shown that the paradigm that has reigned in US politics for at least two decades has been shattered.
That's what is being tested this week. It may be the most important vote in America until the final one, in November.
Obama has been pummelled by a Democrat in ways never witnessed in a primary campaign.
Hillary Clinton has argued he is less qualified to be commander-in-chief than the Republican nominee, John McCain. She has said she doesn't know for sure he is not a secret Muslim. She has said his choice of church is unacceptable to her. She has said he deliberately wants many Americans to continue scraping by without health insurance.
Her campaign has insinuated he was once a drug dealer. The Clintons have publicly associated Obama with domestic terrorist William Ayers, with the militant Palestinian group Hamas and with anti-semitic demagogue Louis Farrakhan.
And what is remarkable about all this is most of it was not done by surrogates, but by her husband -- a former president against a senator in his own party -- and directly by Clinton herself.
(Continued here.)
The Australian
EVEN after all the hype, this week's vote in Pennsylvania will be a watershed primary election.
This isn't because it could determine whether Hillary Clinton's campaign continues on its brutal, nihilistic path towards the destruction of the most promising figure in the Democratic Party since Kennedy.
It isn't because it's been an age since the last primary vote and every nasty toxin in American culture has been drawn to the surface by the Clinton poultice.
It isn't even because Pennsylvania is an indisputably important and large state that any Democrat needs to win in November.
It is because the Clintons haveturned Pennsylvania into a microcosm of what they think the general election will be in November.
And the Clintons are running as the Rove Republicans. If they fail to destroy Barack Obama as effectively as Karl Rove -- George W. Bush's master of the dark arts -- destroyed Al Gore and John Kerry in 2000 and 2004, with tactics just as brutal but even more personal, then they will have driven American politics to a critical point. They will have shown that the paradigm that has reigned in US politics for at least two decades has been shattered.
That's what is being tested this week. It may be the most important vote in America until the final one, in November.
Obama has been pummelled by a Democrat in ways never witnessed in a primary campaign.
Hillary Clinton has argued he is less qualified to be commander-in-chief than the Republican nominee, John McCain. She has said she doesn't know for sure he is not a secret Muslim. She has said his choice of church is unacceptable to her. She has said he deliberately wants many Americans to continue scraping by without health insurance.
Her campaign has insinuated he was once a drug dealer. The Clintons have publicly associated Obama with domestic terrorist William Ayers, with the militant Palestinian group Hamas and with anti-semitic demagogue Louis Farrakhan.
And what is remarkable about all this is most of it was not done by surrogates, but by her husband -- a former president against a senator in his own party -- and directly by Clinton herself.
(Continued here.)
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