Barack Obama's got a lot of good things going for him, but it's really dangerous for politicians to claim that they are above politics, that they somehow transcend the weaknesses of typical politicians. Why?
Because from time to time, all politicians are full of crap, even the best ones. Even John Edwards.
The thing that allows us to forgive them is that we knew they were flawed before they proved it to us.
When you set the bar as high as Obama has, however, you are forcing yourself to be perfect. When you lie, you pretty much destroy the entire rationale for your political existence.
Here's what's happening right now in the campaign: Clinton is starting the process of demolishing Barack Obama. She's finally doing it now because she think John Edwards is no longer viable. Until this point, she thought it was a three-way game of chicken, but because she's discounting Edwards, she's starting the process of eliminating Obama as an opponent.
Her goal? To sweep the Super Tuesday states and end the primary on February 5.
Today Hillary put out a brutal web advertisement (see below). It is brutal because it's honest -- one hundred percent honest. There's really no recovery from it.
During Monday's debate, Obama forcefully denied ever having advocated single-payer. He said that he supported it in theory, but only if he were designing a health care system for scratch.
As this web ad shows, Obama was lying -- completely, totally, unequivocally.
Now that he's been caught in a full-throated lie, he moves from being St. Barack to just another politician.
If he'd run on a progressive economic platform, liberals like me might have been willing to defend him, but I see no reason to. He's made his own bed.
As I said, this ad is completely, devastatingly honest. Here is the raw footage from which it was made:
Now, if Hillary -- or even Edwards -- were caught in such a lie (they've probably uttered them) it wouldn't be quite as big a deal.
Why not?
Because neither of them have made honesty or a new kind of politics the cornerstone of their campaign.
Obama has.
This ad also shows him flip-flopping. He's claimed never to have flip-flopped, making him more electable than either Hillary or Edwards. Well, now that argument is toast.
This comes on the heels of the effective assault on his opposition to the Iraq war. The basic Clinton strategy there was to concede that Obama was in fact against the war in 2002, but that he'd subsequently waffled (which he did), and voted to fund the war (which he also did).
I'm going to predict that as of February 5, it will be clear that Obama will not be the Democratic Party's nominee.
Of course, I could be wrong.
Updated at 12:30
© Jed Lewison