I watched much of the Democratic debate last night from New Hampshire, and grinned mightly when Hillary Clinton put the big slap-down on Wolf Blitzer. And while it was hilarious to see Wolf fumble his notecards when Clinton refused to go along with answering one of those insane "what if..." terrorist questions, something more important than good political theater was taking place. Clinton was leading - she was speaking for the other Democrats on the stage and they were nodding their heads. She was the senior politician at that moment, in terms of talent and moment.
And she's beginning to turn heads even on the lefty blogs that traditionally don't care for her more centrist stances. Slappy asked me in comments the other day why I'm supporting Hillary Clinton. Funny, I wasn't ready to say that yet, but I guess my Hillary-lean is pretty damned obvious. I won't write that post yet, Slappy - but this comment from dKos (not Clinton territory there - Markos openly despises her) gets to the heart of it:
I support Clinton and I'm aware of her weaknesses. I supported Kerry even though he had weaknesses. Every presidential candidate for whom I've ever cast a vote has had, from my very left-wing view, weaknesses. Clinton would be so many hundreds of times better than any of the Republicans running. And, it's time to elect a woman. Somehow, it's been ok for hundreds of years to elect rich white men even though they weren't perfect, but we can apparently only elect a woman if she's perfect. But, of course, no one on the left is in any way sexist. Oh, no.
