OK, OK, I promised not to blog on Hilbama. But what Steve Gilliard said:

These Democrats didn’t just enable Bush’s war, they sat by and let the Right Wing smear machine attack those of us who waged our lonely battles to end this thing.

And it’s still happening: Amanda is Exhibit A.

And while most have come around, Hillary remains the notable exception.

Those who have admitted their mistakes are now free to train their sights on the GOP. It doesn’t absolve them from their terrible judgment, but it mitigates it. While it’s best to not make a mistake in the first place, it’s even worse to compound that mistake by refusing to come to terms with it.

Which is why the Edwards fiasco is so bad. Not only did the Edwards campaign stand by while one of us got smeared, they showed terrible judgment about the nature of the VRWC, and the role that the winger noise machine plays in polluting our political discourse. Can the consultants advising Edwards really have told him that any other solution than going on the attack would work? Could he have believed them? Why?

Clinton doesn’t have that. And what’s worse, she has pretty much lost the window of opportunity to do so. After resisting for so long, she finds herself in the thick of the presidential primary (yes, even a year out) with no room to maneuver. If she suddenly reverses course and decides that yes, she’ll take personal responsibility for her vote, it’ll feed into the strongest anti-Hillary narrative — that she’s a panderer and will say what is most politically expedient at the moment.

It’s a sad state of affairs, but Hillary has made her bed. And while her advisors may cringe that voters demand she account for Iraq at every campaign stop, I hope she continues to get grilled on it. She deserves nothing less.

As CD would say, I’m playing the world’s smallest violin.

I don’t fancy a Clinton dynasty any more than I fancy a Bush dynasty. Fuck dynasties.