McBush wants Hillary

John McBush, that old man who insists he is going to run a positive campaign, is out there shouting at the top of his frail lungs that Hamas is supporting Obama and that the people have a right to know.

Of course, Hamas is a terrorist organization, so if you tell people they are supporting Obama, some of the dopes in this county (and no one panders to dopes better than the Republicans) will believe Obama supports Hamas.

Obama, to the contrary, has made it very clear he condemns Hamas, as he condemns all terrorist organizations. What some terrorist organization in the Middle East thinks or wants really cannnot be known by anyone, and furthermore has nothing to do with our election.

To imply that there is any connection between Obama and Hamas is like charging Obama with treason, and McBush, who uses his reputation as a war hero to do and say anything he wants, should never go down this road. This is an absurd and a hateful accusation, but then so were the swift boat charges against John Kerry's heroism and war service.

While Hillary Clinton is implementing her kitchen sink strategy, McBush – that self-described positive campaigner, that "straight talker," that "maverick," - is using his swift boat strategy against Obama. McBush is just one more typical Republican saying one thing and doing another and counting on the ignorance of the voters not to see it.

What should we make of this double teaming against Obama – this union of a Republican and a Democrat against him? We know why Hillary is doing it. Obama is a pretender to her throne and it is driving her insane.

But why is McBush hauling out every vicious rumor imaginable against Obama, while Hillary gets a pass from him and other influential Republicans, like Rush Limbaugh, Tony Blankley, and Richard Mellon Scaife, some of whom are even praising her?

It can only mean one thing. The Republicans are terrified of an Obama candidacy and drooling over the possibility of running against Hillary.

If the Republicans were more afraid of Hillary than they were of Obama, they would be swift boating her now, so Obama could wrap up the nomination. But they are strangely silent or even complimentary of her. That should alert everyone to the truth. Obama is the most dangerous candidate, the one they don't think Republicans can beat. So they are dragging out all they have now to help Hillary and the Democrats get rid of him early.

One advantage of these attacks on Obama is that the Republicans have already played their hand. Should Obama win the nomination, we already know what the Republican smears will look like. They are already out there.

But the Republicans are holding their fire when it comes to Hillary. I think we can be confident they have tons of ammunition to use against her, but they are waiting. They won't use it now when it could defeat the candidate they want to run against. Instead, they want to defeat the stronger candidate now and they are teaming up with Hillary to do it.

I have wondered what they might have against her, and my guess is that it will be one or more bombshells. Perhaps they have evidence of Bill's infidelity after he left the White House. Revealing that will drag up all the ugliness of Monicagate and the impeachment and doom Hillary's candidacy. No one wants to go there again. Perhaps they will drag up something from her past, or some secretly taped words that will further antagonize the African American community, without whose support she cannot win. Or perhaps there are some financial improprieties.

Whatever they have, you can be sure it is something incredibly damaging. No one does smears better than Republicans, and having McBush at the top of the ticket simply lulls Democrats into a false sense of security that they can trust him to run a positive campaign. If McBush is running a negative campaign now, before the Democrats even have their nominee, what do they think he will do later, when the stakes are higher?

McBush learned his lesson in 2000 when he was smeared by his own Party. He'll never rise above the fray again, no matter what he says. Look what he's doing to Obama now. No, his 2008 campaign is liable to be uglier than the 2004 Bush campaign. And he can't wait to go after Hillary.

Hillary's real fire wall strategy

These past four days the media have finally decided to give Hillary Clinton what she has been whining about and begging for: total negative coverage of every tiny little issue that could slow down Barack Obama's momentum.

They have fallen for her 3 a.m. phone call add wherein a phone rings five or more times at 3 a.m., supposedly in the White House, and a be-jeweled Hillary apparently answers it and saves the country from Muslims or Maritans, it's impossible to tell which. Then they piled on about some memo from the Canadian embassy about NAFTA. Then Hillary compared her experience and John McCain's experience to Barack's "one speech in 2002." Now her negative ads and speeches, many of them completely trivial as well as dishonest, seem to have finally slowed his momentum and may enable her to win Texas and Ohio.

However, even if her disgusting tactics work, she may still not be able to secure enough delegates to win the nomination. Obama may pull it out with his combination of pledged and super delegates no matter what Clinton does to try to take it from him.

So if the math does not favor her, and no matter what happens today she still loses the nomination, what has this tirade of accusations and smears done for her? It certainly doesn't help her party and the down ticket races on the Dem side. It certainly doesn't help Obama. In fact it gives ammunition to John McCain and might possibly help him defeat Obama, just as her husband's unconscionable behavior helped Bush Jr. defeat Gore in 2000.

However, the up side for Hillary is this simple: if she knows she will lose the nomination, but her attacks can wound Obama enough to allow McCain to defeat him in 2008, Hillary can come back in 2012, say "I told you so" and get the nomination for herself.

When will the Democratic Party, and those who vote in the primaries, realize how toxic the Clintons are for the Party? When we finally be able to bury the two-headed Clinton monster?

Behind the smears: what's really at stake for Hillary Clinton

Apparently, Obama isn't the only one to speak positively of Ronald Reagan. Hillary and Bill have too. Yet now they are attacking Obama for what he said about the similarity between this election and the election in which Reagan came to power, and using it against him.

What is becoming clear to me regarding these petty personal attacks, including taking things out of context, overreacting, and deliberately misinterpreting (dare we say spinning?) things the other candidates say, is happening because the three candidates still in the running are basically all proposing the same types of policies. (Kucinich, who is also still in the running is proposing quite different policies and he is therefore simply ignored.) Because there is so little of substance that is really different between them, they must find other reasons to get people to vote for them. And since the stakes are so high, every word, every phrase of each of the candidates is under intense scrutiny by each of the other candidates.

The biggest offender here, although they all participate to some extent, is Senator Clinton. She, her campaign surrogates, and her husband, are all using every opportunity they can to attack Obama because they have the most to lose. Obama has a real chance to get the nominiation which makes him their biggest threat, the one who could take away their dream of re-occupying the White House, which is why they attack him far more than they attack Edwards.

There is so much for them to lose, so much that they have been counting on for nearly eight years: a chance to vindicate the former president, a chance to get even with their enemies by once again wielding power, a chance to implement all the ideas they couldn't implement in the nineties because they were under attack the whole time, a chance to rewrite their legacies. For Hillary, it is also a chance to show the country and indeed the entire world that she is not a victim, but instead the most powerful person in the world.

This is heady stuff, and the thought of achieving it so intoxicating that it seems to have caused her and her husband to lose all objectivity and, in the case of the former president, a great deal of dignity.

Hillary says she is running for president because she cares about the country. I don't doubt her sincerity in saying this as I think she actually believes it. But as a psychotherapist, I know that the real reasons people do things are often below their full awareness. We know that was true of George W. Bush, not only in his desire to run for president, but in his decision to go to war against a country that was not an immediate threat. And now, I fear, Hillary and Bill are attempting to bring their unfinished psychological business to the White House.

This is why you see so many underhanded attacks against Obama, and so much anger on the part of the former president, anger we were told about but didn't really see in his own campaigns, nor in his time in the White House. The years of planning for this potential victory, including victory over their adversaries, the ultimate payback, was within their grasp when this young (though slightly older than Bill Clinton when he ran for president in 1992) upstart dared to challenge them. At first, they didn't realize how much he would appeal to the nation, yes in much the same way that Ronald Reagan appealed to the nation. This is one reason why they are pouncing on the Reagan comments. It isn't just that they want to attack the bogeyman of progressives; it's that they can't let the story line be about a transformative election.

You can see their frustration and anger in their words and their tactics. They simply can't let Obama win. To have their long dreamed of vindication and a return to power stolen from them by this young charismatic candidate is unthinkable. The humiliation would be unbearable.

There is more at stake here than most people realize, and the Clintons are fighters. Anyone who doubts that ought to look back at the impeachment fiasco. Any other president would probably have resigned. Not Bill Clinton.

Any other first lady would have been mortified and gone into retirement. Not Hillary. She imediately began plans to run for the Senate, and now she wants the most powerful job in the world.

If Obama wins in Nevada or South Carolina, expect the smears and attacks to escalate. These people are not quitters, and they have no intention of being losers.