Target: Obama

Being the front-runner has one negative... it puts a big bullseye on you, both from within your own party (hey, it's a primary) and from the other party (who are thinking ahead to a summer of telling everyone why your victory would mean gay immigrant tax-raising terrorists will strangle Baby Jesus with a burning flag). Such now is the fate of Obama.

Hillary Clinton (whose 'experience' card was outplayed for now by Obama's 'change' card) seems to be testing the waters on a new attack... reminding voters that Barack Obama is-- gasp-- a liberal. Oh noes!

There's no dirtier word in American politics than the dreaded "L" word, that's for sure.

Well, at least they're not so desperate yet to go full-throttle with subtle winks at Obama/Muslim rumors and his acknowledged youth drug use (neither of which bothers me, but plays well with a certain segment of the population). For now, that's left up to surrogates. Hey, speaking of dog-whistle divisive racial politics...

There's no telling yet how the larger GOP establishment would go after Sen. Obama should he become the nominee, but hints are starting to emerge. Glenn Greenwald has a new great post up, looking at a 'theory' first posted by the National Review's Jonah "Liberal Fascism" Goldberg and embraced by other top GOP bloggers... that should Obama be nominated, and lose, then "certain segments of American political life" (winkwink) "will become completely unhinged," resulting in "social unraveling". You go, Jonah, party like it's 1968!

As Greenwald points out, in his usually detailed way, the mainstream of one party today is known for being completely unhinged (see: Florida 2000, the run-up to war, the Schiavo debacle, the MoveOn 'scandal', Graeme Frost, etc) and it's not Obama's.

Sen. Obama is getting the kid's gloves right now. But it's going to be a long year.