Obama - Clinton political hardball

The recent political hardball being thrown in the Democratic primary between Sen. Hillary Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama has a lot of hand wringing in the Democratic party and a lot of Republicans complaining about the Clinton's tactics.

While people may not like how the Clinton's are campaigning, one has to remember that Bill Clinton is the only Democrats who have been able to take the White House in more than 30 years. In the last eight years, many Democrats fed up with how the GOP has campaign have said that the Democrats need to take up the mantra of Jim Malone (Sean Connery's character) in the Untouchables movie.

You wanna know how you do it? Here's how, they pull a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue! That's the Chicago way, and that's how you get Capone! Now do you want to do that? Are you ready to do that?

One only has to look at how Al Gore won the 2000 election but was too much of a statesman and American to challenge the theft of the presidency. Unfortunately that may go down as one of the greatest mistakes in American history. Perhaps he had no chance with the way the House of Representatives would have settled the election, but we will never know.

Sen. John Kerry also didn't respond adequately to the false attacks by those on the Right and George Bush was given another pass to the White House. Today many Americans who voted for Bush rue their vote.

The hardball politics makes Democrats uncomfortable because they don't live by the "any means necessary" mentality permeating in the Republican Party. They view their party as the party of hope, as portrayed by Obama. Which is great except for people need to remember who they are campaigning against.

The Republicans farm out their gutter politics to their hate radio division, GOPTV (aka Fox News), or any one of a number of editorial page columnists newspapers feel they must carry to appease those on the right. If one can stand it, one only has to listen, watch, or read a little to the see the impact this unpaid, but very valuable, support has had for the party.

With supporters on the left concentrating on reason over gutter politics, Democratic candidates often find they have to fill the role of "media gutterists," and the results aren't pretty (just ask former Sen. Max Cleland).

However, this year because of the revulsion over George W. Bush, the Democratic Party may not need to get in the gutter with the GOP, but they need to be prepared to go there.