:: Why I Really Dislike Barack

Barack is looking worse every day.

Paul Krugman has a new item in his blog on the Obama campaign's use of GOP motifs. First Krugman pointed out the disingenuous and short-sighted way Barack talks about heath insurance mandates; this morning he notes Barak's increasing use of the term "trial lawyer" to imply that John Edwards is his moral inferior.

The use of GOP messages and techniques is a pattern of behavior that has come to define the man. In addition, he appears to fancy himself quite the moralist and the maverick. Its deja-Lieberman all over again.

I wonder how many have noticed that along with talk of "mandates" and "trial lawyers" he's used the right wing playbook on the question of "experience."

His campaign has busily tried to denigrate every aspect of Sen. Clinton's public service, going so far as to suggest her trips abroad as First Lady were nothing more than a series of tea parties. He regularly employs a double standard - his Senate experience is important, hers is meaningless - to his advantage.

It reminds me of the GOPs treatment of Sen. John Kerry's war record in 2004. Kerry started out as a war hero - he had the service record to prove it - but Bush, Cheney and friends assiduously hammered away at him until he came to be seen as a coward. Somehow Bush and Cheney - who never served - were seen as patriotic, while Kerry was seen as a traitor.

Now I am watching Obama's campaign try to transform Sen. Clinton - an intensely hard working and greatly accomplished person - into a gold-digger who chit-chatted her way through her adult life while her husband did all the heavy lifting.

Meanwhile, the question of what - if anything - Obama accomplished in his three years working as an organizer is left unanswered. His failed campaign against Bobby Rush, his maneuvering to get Alice Palmer and other candidates thrown off the ballot so he could cakewalk into his state Senate seat, and the twin implosions of Blair Hull and Peter Fitzgerald that helped pave the way for his U.S. Senate win are left out of the picture.

Any Republican campaign would chew him up and swallow him down like a Beagle on a snausage. Giuliani and McCain would mock and humiliate him on the security / terrorism issue. Huckabee would nail him on elitism and not seeming authentically "American." Romney would trump him on the economy, trade and business. It would be a debacle.