[pla_time]

It is unfortunate, but recent history shows that the candidates that are willing to go to any length, spin any yarn, and sling any amount of mud, are the ones who end up winning (such as the yarns that Bush's flacks told about McCain down in South Carolina in 2000). Of course, the really older history in the USA wasn't honestly much nicer, e.g., the pamphlets issued by the founders and their flacks.

Unless Obama is willing to go negative, and start going after Hillary (e.g., about what "experience" she really had as first lady that makes her qualified to do foreign policy, and how she couldn't even keep track of where Bill was [or what he was doing]), I suspect that Obama is going to have an even harder time getting the nomination. I believe that a lot of Democrats who support Obama just won't vote, if Hillary steals the nomination. But, she'd rather destroy the party and lose to McCain, than to be honest about the fact that she, for all intents and purposes, is not going to have the most (honestly won) delegates at the convention.