Let the sliming begin!!!

Eugene Robinson has words of advice for us:

It is insane to waste time and energy worrying that somewhere, doubtless in a high-tech subterranean lair, Republican masterminds are cackling over their diabolical plot: The use of reverse psychology to lure unsuspecting Democrats into nominating Barack Obama, an innocent lamb who will be chewed up by the attack machine in the fall. Mwa-ha-ha-ha-ha!

Or maybe Republicans are using double super secret backward reverse psychology to exploit the Democratic Party's congenital paranoia: Let's say nice things about Obama so Democrats think we really want to run against him, and that will make them play into our hands by nominating Hillary Clinton, who so energizes the Republican base that we can actually win an election that we ought to lose. Cue another round of deranged mad-scientist laughter.

Amazingly, those are the kinds of things you hear Democrats say out loud these days. Let me suggest that the party has enough to think about without dreaming up imaginary dilemmas.

Democratic primary voters, caucus-goers and superdelegates are right to keep electability in mind as they choose between Obama and Clinton. But Democrats shouldn't give a second thought to whether Republican strategists have some secret "agenda" in mind. No matter which candidate Democrats nominate, the Republican game plan is obvious: Go negative.

Indeed. Despite the vaunted "brilliance" of such as Karl Rove and Newt Gingrich, they really have only one play in the playbook, and they've used it consistently for well over a decade. It wouldn't matter to them whether it was Hillary Clinton or Barack ("<*pssst!*> Hussein!!!!") Obama; who ever ends up on top will get Swift-boated.

And as Obama starts looking like he'll prevail in the Democratic nomination race, the usual "usuals" are getting warmed up. Sighting in his sniper rifle is the "historian" Victor Davis Hanson:

In these uncertain times, the relatively new Sen. Barack Obama has become America’s “change” candidate. But how different in real terms is the Obama candidacy?

Obama’s father was from Kenya[!!!], and he grew up for a time in Indonesia [!!!]. But, otherwise, Obama was raised by his white mother and grandparents in a middle-class suburb in Hawaii — a unique upbringing in the 1970s but hardly so in today’s multiracial and itinerant America.

At private school, he was sometimes known as Barry. Perhaps had he taken the name of his maternal family who raised him — Dunham — a Sen. Barry Dunham of mixed ancestry from Illinois would now not be causing quite the same sensation.

Thank goodness he didn't have a name like Kenisha or Antwan, eh? "He'd be better off having a good white name so that people will vote for him. Well, you know.... Those people.... The people whose votes we're competing for...." Don't believe my take on the esteemed Hanson's screed here? He continues:

Indeed, a Sen. Dunham may have been viewed as a minority candidate to the same limited degree that a similar staid-sounding Gov. Bill Richardson resonated as a Mexican-American.

D'ya get it?!?!? He's black! Now if he'd just do the proper thing and pick a white name (and say "Massah").....

But anything's fair game for the RW assassins, no matter how intellectually bankrupt and hypocritical. Like this:

Obama’s later Ivy-League education and political career resemble those of many elites in both parties. While Sen. and Mrs. Obama lecture, in populist fashion, about the burdens of school loans, they are really talking about paying off their two Harvard Law School tuitions, degrees that are not typical of struggling students, but instead government-guaranteed investments in the good life — as their 2006 joint income of nearly a million dollars attests.

Pretty amasing that Mr. Hanson should rail about the eyyyy-vuls of actually paying off loans. Oh, the humanity....

And that these people should have had the temerity to gain acceptance to a good law school and graduate.... Why, doesn't that make them "elites"?

And does Hanson even know that any such loans were "government-guaranteed" (as if that -- if indeed true -- is also some black mark, rather than a sign that such loans may not be all that bad an idea)? It would truly be terrible if loans, particularly government-guaranteed loans, actually let people achieve their potential, now. Dontcha know you only deserve something if you're already rich as Croesus?

And the contempt for someone earning a million dollars is rich (so to speak) coming from a Republican sycophant.

You have to wonder if there's anything that Barack Obama might have done right, in Hanson's eyes. Oh. Right. Stupid question. Of course not.....