Eric makes a fair point when he says that Barack Obama's drug use won't prove off-limits in the general election, so it's worth seeing how he'll respond to these allegations now. On the other hand, we sort of are seeing how he'll respond to these allegations now: He'll try and turn them on the attacker. And, at this point, the media is aiding him in that quest, constructing a story that's about the Clinton campaign's cynicism rather than Barack Obama's youthful partying. Of course, the lesson the Republican will learn from this is that if you want to go after Obama's drug use, it's got to be an independent expenditure from a totally separate third party -- in other words, it's got to be the Swift Boat Veterans, not your New Hampshire campaign co-chair. It's not clear to me how you rebut those quiet mailers or darkly insinuating ads. In that way, Shaheen may have really helped Obama. By tossing the allegations out in a clumsy and transparent way, he put them in the public consciousness in a mild way and accompanied by widespread rebuttal and denunciation. In doing, he may have inoculated Obama a bit. By exposing the electorate to these charges in their weak and treatable form, it may be harder for the GOP to deploy them in a more damaging, sinister fashion. "What they are" will have already been established, and it won't be all that bad,
