And the Beat Goes On

Many Dems are dismayed today that the race for the nomination goes on for at least another two weeks. Time is the enemy of the party, and especially Barack Obama. Since the March 4th primaries we learned about Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama's relationship with the unrepentent (though imcompetent) domestic terrorist William Ayers, and heard him give his "bitter America" remarks. We also saw the Bronze Messiah fumble badly in the last debate (and I mean "last" debate because he'll never agree to another one with Hillary).

We also learned about Tuzla Snipergate on Hillary's side, but Obama clearly got the worst of it with Hillary highlighting his foibles and creating John McCain's campaign ads for him.

Hillary's hopes at this point rely on further troubles for Obama being exposed as the race goes on, and today the boys at Powerline are all too willing to help. They have a piece on Obama's continuing problems regarding his relationship to William Ayers and co-terrorist Bernadine Dohrn.

When Illinois State Senator Alice Palmer decided to retire in 1995, she hand-picked local left-winger Barack Obama as her successor. In order to introduce Obama to influential liberals in the district, she held a function at the home of Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn. This was, really, the beginning of Obama's political career, and it linked him forever with Ayers and Dohrn, with whom, as his campaign has acknowledged, he continues to have a friendly relationship.

Ayers and Dohrn were famous radicals, and fugitives from the law, in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Dohrn, actually, was the more famous of the two; she was the head, as I recall, of Students for a Democratic Society or one of its factions. Dohrn was crazy. She is the only public figure, to my knowledge, to approve publicly and enthusiastically of the Charles Manson murders.

Ayers was a would-be murderer of soldiers and policemen, but he wasn't a very good terrorist. He had the ill fortune to choose September 11, 2001, as the day on which to publish an op-ed in the New York Times, in which he said that he didn't regret his attempted murders and only wished that he had planted more bombs.

In last week's Pennsylvania debate, Barack Obama was finally asked about his friendship with, and the political support he has accepted from, Ayers and Dohrn. Obama replied that Ayers had done reprehensible things forty years ago, when Obama was eight years old, and scoffed at the idea that Ayers's ancient history could be relevant. That was disingenuous, of course, given Ayers's 2001 regrets.

It turns out that we don't have to go back as far as 2001 to find that Obama's friends are as unrepentant as ever. Just last year, Ayers and Dohrn attended a reunion--no kidding--of what must have been the tiny remnant of SDS members who still haven't figured out that they were wrong about everything. Listen to what Bill Ayers, who hosted Barack Obama's first fundraiser, has to say about the United States. Not when Obama was eight years old, but in 2007.

Go to the original post for the audio clips. They're not going to help Obama, though if he stays away from the press as he has for past 10 days, he may never get asked about it.

Powerline promises more good stuff tomorrow. Stay tuned.

UPDATE: It may be time for Obama to go negative on Hillary:

In the two weeks leading up to the Indiana primary, a Democratic strategist familiar with the Obama campaign said aides are likely to turn to the controversies of Bill Clinton’s White House years — Hillary Clinton’s trading cattle futures, Whitewater and possibly impeachment.

“Everyone knows the history of the Clintons,” the strategist said.