For the most part, this Time article is typical wannabe punditry. I don't care too much for the author's analysis about the break in the democratic party's foundation. Perhaps, I am jaded by the New Hampshire prognoses and the actual result. Nevertheless, the piece does provide a nice synopsis of the tiff:
The mess began —as these things almost always do — in a normal tit for tat between the candidates. After Obama was poised to surge past Clinton after Iowa, Clinton charged that Obama was raising "false hopes" with his soaring rhetoric that emphasized ends over means. Obama skewered Clinton right back in New Hampshire, asking where the nation would be if both JFK — in making a manned mission to the moon a goal — or Martin Luther King Jr. (in his 1963 Lincoln Memorial speech) had instead shut down their visions and told America they were simply too hard to achieve. Delivered with humor and always to soaring applause, Obama's was a devastating rejoinder.
But then Clinton came back and, far less artfully, said that King's visions were great, but it took an experienced politician like Lyndon Johnson to get them enacted. At the very least, Clinton had equated the sometimes crass master of the legislative backroom with one of America's patron saints. (The real problem is that Clinton seemed to put LBJ on a pedestal higher than King's.) That was probably not her intention, but neither was this her best example in the deeds-not-words crusade she was on. In any case, at that point, things began to unravel.
Of course, the tiff ended this morning. Perhaps, there is something to be said about party-unity. Although, the skeptic in me believes this is just smart campaigning.
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