Dick Durbin’s Republican opponent is “resorting to personal, hateful personal attacks,” a Durbin spokesman told Chi Trib. 

“I don’t think that’s what people are looking for. I think people are looking for constructive discussion on issues and not scorched-earth, old-style politics.”

No they aren’t.  Personal attacks win elections or tip close ones.  Not that Durbin’s in a close one.  He has a life seat in the U.S. Senate.  But his attacks on personal attacks — this time “personal, hateful personal attacks,” for a double, even triple whammy — are common

“The hottest ring in hell is reserved for those in politics who attack their opponents’ families,” he said on Messy NBC, reacting to criticism of Mrs. O. “And if there are some Republican strategists who think that’s the way to win the election, I think they’re wrong.”

He’s wrong and knows it, which is why he came up with this ring-in-hell business.

On the other hand, he was one of 25 senators voting against condemning “personal attacks” on Gen. Petraeus by a MoveOn.Org last September.  Ah, but that was different, was it not?

September is the cruelest month for Durbin, who in that month in 2005 from the Senate floor, during debate on an energy bill, compared Americans running Guatanomo to “Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime——Pol Pot or others——that had no concern for human beings.”

For which he at first refused to apologize (said Aljazeera in a link now cached-only) but later did, with tears:

“Some may believe that my remarks crossed the line,” the Illinois Democrat said on Tuesday. “To them I extend my heartfelt apologies.”

To the others a wink.

Dick Morris has quite a good rundown here on “Why the race is tied,” including Obama’s carrying “flip-flopping to new heights”:

In the space of a month and a half, this candidate — who we don’t really yet know very well — reversed or sharply modified his positions on at least eight key issues

which he lists.  He also addresses the politico-moral equivalence argument:

Obama’s breathtaking flips and flops are materially different from McCain’s. While McCain had opposed offshore oil drilling and now supports it, the facts have obviously changed. Obama’s shifts have nothing to do with altered circumstances, just a change in the political calendar.

Somebody has even called O. a

“black Bill Clinton,” a turnaround of the “first black president” moniker that had been pinned on Bill.

The comparison has relevance to another phenomenon, the O. campaign being all for itself, and the devil take other Dem candidates, to judge from this at Politico:

After a brief bout of Obamamania, some Capitol Hill Democrats have begun to complain privately that Barack Obama’s presidential campaign is insular, uncooperative and inattentive to their hopes for a broad Democratic victory in November.

Praise abounds for all-around newsman, commentator, and presidential press secretary Tony Snow — “the best ever, without qualification,” says John Podhoretz. 

He could speak with fluency, honesty, wit, and clarity on every subject under the sun; he remained poised, unruffled, and as sure of himself at the podium in the press room as he was on that boat in the Potomac nearly two decades earlier.

But this from Brendan Miniter tells about him in a way most memorably:

I last saw Tony several years ago as he was heading out the door of a Starbucks in Alexandria, Va., on his way to work. He wasn’t rushing. He had time for a man who was asking for spare change. Tony reached into his pocket, dug out several coins and at least one bill and handed it to the man. I saw Tony step closer to the man and heard him ask how he was. As the door closed, I couldn’t hear what else he said, but as Tony walked away both were smiling.

Confident in his benevolence.

John K, Wilson, author of Barack Obama, This Improbable Quest, takes a shot at rebutting Dennis Byrne, who accused O. of flip-flopping in the matter of campaign financing.  Before, he was for it (taking fed money and calling off fund-raising), later he was against it (broken system, can’t condone it, can’t employ it, like a broken PC: can’t use it, you know, have to get a Mac).

Not so, says Wilson, who blogs at www.obamapolitics.com — “Barack Obama is quickly becoming America’s most popular politician” — and has criticized the U. of Colorado committee that punished prof Ward Churchill as “opening the door to a vast new right-wing witch hunt on college campuses that conservatives could easily exploit across the country.” 

“Obama never made an unconditional promise to take public funding,” says Wilson in a letter to Chi Trib editor that identifies him as author of his book, which he would dearly like us all to know about — I didn’t — which is unusual in letter-writer (“Voice of the People”) identifications.  Wouldn’t we all like our books given such display?  The letters editor would be swamped.

To Wilson: What was the condition O. set?  And what’s this “agreement” vs. “promise”?  Publicly made, of course, to gain advantage in campaign sweepstakes.

“I defy Byrne to offer a single example,” says this doughty campaigner-book author. 

Byrne accuses Obama’s campaign of “shading the truth” because “it implies that all the money comes from small contributions of $5, $10 or $20.”

But this was the entire import of O’s agreement-not-a-promise, was it not?  That he as reformer would take the supposed reformer’s path?  Wilson missed that?

Again the bluster, reminiscent of “I would challenge” to Chicago newsies to “dispute that basic fact” — that he’s not a typical Chicago politician:

Unless Byrne can come up with a single example in which Obama’s campaign claimed that all of its money comes from $20 donations or less, he’s “shading the truth” and owes Obama–and his readers–an apology.

En garde, Byrne!  We bloggers at obamapolitics.com want to joust!  Make our day!

Big O. and the gang should call this guy off, especially in view of its claim that this was “an extremely difficult decision.”

Of course.  Breaking (up) an agreement is always hard to do.

Maybe a blip:

It will take a few more days to determine whether this recent tightening of the race reflects real change or is merely statistical noise. (see recent daily results).

But, my friends, it’s a horse race.

For the second straight day, the Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll shows that the race for the White House is tied.

Things are going badly in Springfield, says Rich Miller, who lists problems, including:

Unemployment is rising, yet a jobs-producing capital construction bill for our roads, bridges, schools and mass transit is stuck in limbo.

Reading along, I thought he was going to say a tax-reduction bill was in limbo, or such bill is not being discussed.  But he refers to state spending that would produce jobs. 

Reasonable state spending perhaps, on roads, bridges, etc., assuming those are not bridges to nowhere, and incidentally jobs-producing.  But as it stands, his reference smacks of statist solution to economic problem.

He also says:

Nothing — literally nothing — is being accomplished because the governor and the speaker want to crush each other.

Literally as opposed to when he says nothing but doesn’t mean it?

And finally, he speaks of the “intractable morass” that calls for solution.  Ouch.  Morasses are for avoiding, not solving, and in any case we have here a familiar metaphor matched with the non-metaphorical “intractable.”  Stay non-metaphorical, I say: it makes for precision.