Wanker of the Day: John Aravosis of Americablog

John, for those of you who don't know, is the proprietor of Americablog, and he has a post on the election titled What will the Republicans throw at Hillary Clinton in the fall?

Generally, I highly recommend his blog, just not this post:

.... But I'm not going to detail those things today because I'm, surprisingly, still pulling punches with regards to what I write about Hillary. I don't want to damage Hillary should she become our nominee, as increasingly unlikely as that appears. I don't want to write about very real scandals in Hillary's past, scandals that we will be forced to revisit for the next 8 months, and 8 years. I don't want to write about the rumors about Bill that no one has written about to date, even though the rumors include lots of details which are at least just as true as Obama being a Muslim. While Hillary's campaign is pushing known lies about Obama, such as the "Muslim" connection, most of the stories about Hillary are anything but lies. They're real stories that she will have to discuss publicly, again and again and again, to her and our party's detriment.

But I'm not going to be discussing the details of those stories today because I don't want to make our candidate damaged goods in the fall. You will notice that neither Obama's campaign nor Obama's official, or unofficial, surrogates are talking about the Clintons' past or present scandals, the Clintons' negatives, what a Clinton run for the presidency will to Democratic congressional races and governor races across the country. The Clintons are counting on the fact that none of us will write about their negatives, because we're too nice. So they can get as dirty as they want, with impunity.

He then goes on to say that he will unload if Clinton does not get 65%.

This is bull%$#@. I disagree on any number of levels:

• The empirical evidence, specifically the long primaries in 1976 and 1992 when the Democrats won the elections, indicates that prematurely wrapping up the nomination process does not create wins.
• Just look at 2004. John Kerry was consistently ahead of GW Bush until he had locked up the nomination.
• For that matter, look at 2008, where the only way that John McCain gets any coverage, now that he's pretty much nailed down the nomination, is when a right wing bigot endorses him.
• Clinton's and Obama's attacks on each other are really pretty tame, that "3am phone" ad is rather mild.
• I'd like to see the Pennsylvania primary used to build the party there, and that will happen only if the primary means something.
• At this point, we are talking about a 5-6% difference in delegate count.
  

I don't want a brokered convention, but the fat lady has not sung, though it does appear that she has started warming up.

I certainly have my disappointments about the nomination process, John Edwards pulled out before I could vote for him, but the fact that that the Democratic candidates and the Democratic agenda is getting additional coverage because the process is ongoing is a good thing.