I hold no brief for the Clintons, and have criticized them in his space and elsewhere. And while I'm hesitant to ascribe such reductive motives to other people's political passions, I can't help but think that Andrew Sullivan's loathing of Hillary is predicated upon a deeply-felt misogyny. How else to explain this?
As the campaign goes on, the more you see who she is. The polling has not damaged Obama as she hoped, so she will now make Rove's and Hannity's strategy hers:
"He would not have been my pastor," Clinton said. "You don't choose your family, but you choose what church you want to attend."
I'm not a Democrat and I know how vile the Clintons are. But this really is a new low. I think it is becoming a national imperative to defeat the Clintons.
In case Andrew didn't notice, Obama's relationship with Jeremiah Wright dominated the news cycle for all of last week. People other than those old hobgoblins "Rove" and "Hannity" -- liberals, centrists, and even some of the handful of conservatives whom Andrew hasn't yet denounced as impostors -- have asked perfectly legitimate questions about said relationship (guess they won't be getting an "Yglesias Award" anytime soon). After everything the Clintons have done in almost two decades of public life, this is what Andrew believes to be "a new low?"
There is no shortage of reasons to be annoyed with the Clintons. But Hillary's blithe statement that a person does not choose his family but indeed does choose his venue of religious worship ought not be one of them.
--James Kirchick