The Democratic Debate

If one wanted to be snarky, she might point out that Hillary Clinton spent Martin Luther King Day bashing -- in very personal terms -- the greatest hope yet for an African American president in American history. One might further wonder how Hillary Clinton squares her support for affirmative action with her repeated insistence that she should be president -- after all, one can hardly argue that Barack Obama is insufficiently liberal or otherwise lacks any indispensable credential to be president, other than experience (and that's not necesarily a decisive factor, as Richard Nixon and JFK could tell you).

For his part, Barack Obama was shocked, shocked! to learn that Bill and Hillary Clinton aren't "factually accurate" when they criticize their political opponents(or other times, in all fairness).

The personal attacks were sharp, remarkably so. The fact is that the exchanges probably ended up helping Barack more, because he came off as less personal than Hillary, who came across as very hard and somewhat desperate -- and risks making herself unpopular among African Americans for some time to come. That being said, he's got to worry about coming off as osmething of a crybaby when he complains about the Clintons ganging up on him.

Gotta love it, don't you? Pull up a chair, pop up the corn and enjoy watching 'em go at it.