'Memo to the anti-Clinton brigades'

I found this from KOS:

Hillary is my least favorite of the viable candidates on substantive grounds, and I'll be voting for Barack Obama here pretty soon here in California via absentee ballot. The second-to-last thing I want is Mark Penn and Terry McAluiffe anywhere near the White House. (The last thing? Another Republican administration.)

But the more assholish her detractors behave, the more you help her. The way she was treated the past few days in New Hampshire was a disgrace, and likely a large reason for her surprise victory. So keep attacking her for bullshit reasons, and you'll be generating more and more sympathy votes for her. Obama's "you're likable enough" was likely worth 2-3 points all by its lonesome self.

In May 2006 I wrote this in the Washington Post:

In person, Clinton is one of the warmest politicians I've ever met, but her advisers have stripped what personality she has, hiding it from the public. Some of that may be a product of her team's legendary paranoia, somewhat understandable given the knives out for her. But what remains is a heartless, passionless machine, surrounded by the very people who ground down the activist base in the 1990s and have continued to hold the party's grassroots in utter contempt. [That's why KOS doesn't support her. I think some of them are contemptuous myself. Read their comments on the blogs. Some of them are outrageous.]

In New Hampshire, her campaign seems to have realized that there's value in giving people a look at that personality. The decision to open up may have been "calculated", but what's behind the steel curtain is a genuinely warm, likable human being. I know this from first-hand experience.

The more she's attacked on personal grounds, the more sympathy that real person will generate, the more votes she'll win from people sending a message to the media and her critics that they've gone way over the line of common decency. You underestimate that sympathy at your own peril. If I found myself half-rooting for her given the crap that was being flung at her, is it any wonder that women turned out in droves to send a message that sexist double-standards were unacceptable? Sure, it took one look at Terry McAuliffe's mug [pictured] to bring me back down to earth, but most people don't know or care who McAuliffe is. They see people beating the shit out of Clinton for the wrong reasons, they get angry, and they lash back the only way they can -- by voting for her.

The vote for the two "change" candidates outstripped the vote for the two "experience" candidates. I'm with change. I have no interest in seeing behavior that, in essence, helps the status quo.

(Emphasis added.) I'm drained from the events of the past few days so forgive me if I'm a little quiet.