is right.

I mean, its obvious that Daschle was being undercut by people in the White House -- the information in the Times article on Daschle recommending Hindery for Commerce had to come from "the transition team", and the sourcing (identifying the sources only as "Democrats" in a front page article in the Times means that whoever leaked the info was both highly placed and had massive amounts of pull) makes it even more obvious.

And while Obama's statement of "full support" for Daschle yesterday could simply have been to provide Daschle with a graceful exit, the orchestrated expression of support from Senators yesterday is a different matter entirely -- that would not have been choreographed unless Daschle hadn't figured out that he was already on his way out.

Anyone see the hand of Rahm in this one? Daschle represented a major power center to compete with Rahm in the administration, and now he's history...

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2...

Former Time Magazine reporter Matt Cooper, at his new TPM blog, wrote yesterday:

At the moment, you have to think Tom Daschle is going to pull this out. . . . The blogs are not on fire--yes, there's Greenwald, I know--but there's not pitchfork mob calling for his head of the size and scope usually needed to kill a nomination. The optics of the thing are terrible but it's not deadly.

that helped deliver the deathblow to Daschle's nomination:

Update: February 3, 2009
After this editorial was published, Tom Daschle did the right thing – for himself and more important for the Obama administration – and withdrew his name from nomination as Secretary of Health and Human Services. He may have been propelled to do so by the news that Nancy Killefer, who was appointed by Mr. Obama to the newly created position of White House chief performance officer, had also withdrawn – citing her own tax troubles. The withdrawal of Ms. Killefer had left a lot of people, including us, scratching their heads and wondering what had become of President Obama's high ethical standards. It should not be hard for the new president to find high-quality appointees to both of these posts. Before he names them, he might have his team do a little more thorough scrubbing of their tax returns. Americans have the right to know that their appointed leaders pay their full share of taxes.

How many times did the NYT ignore the shenanigans of those connected with the Bush administration. Those jerks. Now they decide to be all ethical and disapproving? Of course, Bush was all "I'm gonna do what I want and you can't stop me." And no one could, apparently. Our media and the democratic party. What pillars they are. Yes, Daschle withdrew. That's good, but jaysusfreakingchristina.

This whole thing is pathetic. Gah!!!!! Embarrassing.

Bingo. The first thing that came to my mind was how second-string a lot of his decision making has been. And, it also brought back, to me, the argument against him of his inexperience, which, on its own, didn't take completely invalidate him, for me, but did strike me as a fair argument. The fumbles are really stuff I'd expect at a state-level executive office. His "my bad" admission, yesterday, wasn't very impressive, either. It's like he's winging it, which, again, may be forgivable for a new senator, but something we really shouldn't have to put up with at the level of the national executive office.