Joe is being nice in his post below. See, even when discussing what a frightful, awful, nasty mess Hillary has become, how she’s even willing to race-bait Obama a la willy Horton, Joe is still too nice to use the M-word. Lots of Democrats are too nice too. Obama is too nice. His staff is too nice. His surrogates are too nice – note that Claire McCaskill didn’t detail even one Clinton scandal (but you’d better believe the Clintons will flay her alive, nonetheless). Hell, even the blogs supporting Obama, and Netroots groups like MoveOn, are too nice. None of these people want to mention Monica Lewinsky even when they’re talking about the kind of nasty issues that Republicans will throw at Hillary in the fall. That reticence, that decency that comes naturally and innately to non-Clinton Democrats is what Joe is talking about.

Hillary hasn’t had to defend herself in years against all the Monica Lewinsky crap, against rumors about her husband, rumors about herself (see, even I’m being nice and hedging here by not giving you details about the rumors – but you can bet they’re gonna go public in the fall), about Whitewater, Travelgate, Filesgate, cattle futures, and on and on. When Hillary is pulling racist crap on Obama, trashing black churches, comparing him to Jesse Jackson, she likes to talk about how she’s really doing it to help him and help the party – you see, she’s preparing him for what’s coming in the fall. She’s “fully vetting” him. But who is fully vetting Hillary? The last time she came under the full onslaught of the right-wing conspiracy it destroyed her likability in the public eye, and made her one of the most hated Democrats in America. And she’s still paying a price today with horrendous disapproval ratings that she’s been carrying for a decade.

If Hillary manages to steal the nomination, the Republicans are going to throw every Clinton scandal in her face, and then some – you can rest assured that they won’t be afraid to say the M-word. And when the country is yet against forced to talk about Monica and oral sex 24/7, Democrats will be looking back at Rev. Wright as the good ole days.