Ten Things To Read Today

If you only have time to do a bit of reading today, then these 10 articles should be what you take a look at:

1. Kevin Drum, Obama supporter, has had enough of bogus charges of racism against Hillary Clinton by Obama supporters apparently on the lookout for anything that could conceivably raise a red flag. I agree with him - some of the attacks, most of which he mentions, are dramatically over the top. Ross Douthat thinks that attaching labels of racism to complaints won’t get far in the general election. He’s also right. The red phone ad raised a legitimate question, time for holdout Obama supporters to get over it.
2. Fareed Zakaria finds that the pandering on NAFTA and trade hurts the reputation of the Democrats abroad; it’s disputed on how it weighs with other foreign policy concerns. I’ve talked about the pandering recently as well.
3. Hillary Clinton’s claims of significant experience in Serbia was refuted by the first hand knowledge of … Sinbad? No, really. Jonathan Chait is a bit stunned that Sinbad’s argument is persuasive. The Clinton campaign response, for what it is worth, is that Sinbad has more experience than Obama on Serbia. Michael Crowley thinks more should be made of Clinton’s role on Kosovo. Others, including Jonah Goldberg, point to a cover story in the New York Times that is a couple months old on the topic.
4. How organized is the Obama campaign? They’re using Iowa supporters to call the Edwards regional delegates for this coming weekends regional convention to get more support in Iowa. There are no reports of anything similar with the Clinton campaign.
5. Barack Obama and John McCain have a history together in working on ethics reform, as TNR explores at length and in detail (including quotes from the non-McCain loving Rick Santorum). It left a bitter taste in both of their mouths. Andrew Sullivan, though, does not buy it.
6. An Obama supporter used the 3 am ad to talk about the Clinton sex scandals and quickly resigned / was forced to resign.
7. 1984 VP Candidate Geraldine Ferraro said in an interview “If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman [of any color] he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept.” First, that’s not true. The first example out of my head is any Kennedy could be doing what Obama is doing (with more of the Hispanic vote and less of the black vote). Secondly, I don’t find the notion of a woman politician doing this as outrageous as Ferraro seems to; I can imagine circumstances where someone like Elizabeth Edwards breaks through. And those are just Democratic examples. It’s only about being seen as larger than life. Considering how closely they are running, it’s not a stretch to imagine Hillary herself as being in Obama’s position had some circumstances changed slightly. The Clinton campaign immediately disagreed with the comments. Today, though David Axelrod called for Ferraro to be dropped from the Clinton Finance Committee and any other role in the campaign. Clinton responded herself that surrogates for both sides go too far on occasion but the discussion should be on the issues. Christopher Beam wonders why so many smart people are saying such stupid things.
8. Marc Ambinder writes that John McCain is going to run a very different type of campaign that focuses on regional messages and politics. This is either going to work great or it’s going to lead to the informal rise of a chief political advisor and dramatic change being instituted at a breakneck pace sometime in the coming months. A roll of the dice, if you will.
9. Nancy Pelosi herself says that there will be no unity ticket; specifically the ship sailed when the Clinton campaign said that McCain would be a better Commander in Chief than Obama.
10. The AFL-CIO is starting a broad anti-McCain campaign.

One thing not to read: idle speculation about McCain’s VP Choice. Now including even Clarence Thomas. Let’s all just wait a while, please? Everyone cares about who the VP choice is until the candidate reveals who it is, at which point everyone stops caring.