In Pennsylvania, Obama is running more Harry and Louise ads on health care, lying about the nature of Clinton's mandate and reducing his moral and policy authority on the issue. Meanwhile, Clinton continues talking about the need to break the rules she helped set and reseat Florida and Michigan because doing so makes it infinitesimally likelier that she could win the nomination, even as she rips apart the party. Y'all keep e-mailing me this stuff, but I've said my piece on both. I think Obama's smears on health care reprehensible and Clinton's comments loathsome. But they're just repeating old attacks, as they're going to do until the primary ends. Which is why there's no use in playing whack-a-mole with these negative ads. It's the continuation of the primary that's the root problem. We long ago reached the point when the non-campaign actors, ranging from individual supporters to party leaders, need to be insisting that if the candidates want to drag this out, they do so cleanly. So long as the primary drags on, these attacks will continue, at least until the incentives change and the campaigns begin to fear both popular and elite backlash. Update: But seriously, from the campaign that claimed John McCain, unlike Barack Obama, has passed the commander-in-chief threshold, this is some hypocritical bullshit.
