Now Obama is back to not being good enough?

So, first, there was the whole Commander-in-Chief nonsense. Hillary Clinton and her surrogates essentially claimed Obama had little more to offer America as President than a 2002 speech against the War in Iraq. At the same time, she praised the presumptive Republican nominee John McCain for his “years of experience.” Those comments got a huge smackdown from the Democratic base who was appalled that the Clinton campaign would say something so disloyal to the party, not just once but several times.

Simultaneously, there was Hillary and Bill Clinton taking the opposite tack. They both went out of their way to suggest that the man Hillary said hadn’t passed the Commander-in-Chief threshold would be good as the next in line, one heartbeat away from the President (see story). Most people believed this was just a ploy to get Obama fans with doubts to switch sides because Hillary would put him on the ticket with her. You get two for the price of one, wink-wink, nudge-nudge. That too was smacked down as disingenuous and calculated.

So Hillary Clinton is back to her previous position of saying that Obama isn’t qualified to even be VP. They have given up the silly pretense that Obama could be unqualified for office, yet he would be a ‘dream’ VP on Hillary’s ticket because no one believed it. And no one believed she believed it.

One can speculate on the Clintons’ motives, but in the end it all leads to one conclusion: The Clintons are a calculating, win-at-all costs, old school politics duo angling to get Hillary in the White House by using dirty politics and masking their real intentions. The Clintons continue to go negative and, for me, “Clinton fatigue” has set in. I can’t watch this debacle.

In the Republican race, Mitt Romney had the courage to quit the Presidential race early, understanding he had an uphill battle to the nomination. As a result, John McCain and the Republican party are sitting pretty, raising cash and looking out from the Cat Bird’s seat as the Democrats tear each other to bits.

This primary season is looking more and more like 1972 all over again. Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ‘08.