"The media is doing its best to play down Joe Biden’s casual insult of half of America as 'garbage'.... Why on earth would anyone assume Mr. Biden would..."

"... again show derision for voters he’s labeled 'semi-fascists,' 'MAGA extremists' and proponents of 'Jim Crow 2.0'? Of course it wasn’t a gaffe. It’s the latest injection of toxic Democratic arrogance—and it explains the party’s electoral struggles. It’s of a piece with the open dismissal by the media and elites of critics as idiots, yokels, deplorables. The men accused of 'toxic masculinity.' The women written off as 'handmaids.' The religious 'fanatics.' The millions the left scorn with a long list of 'ist' and 'phobe' words. If you don’t bow to progressive dogma, you are a fascist. Sexist. Racist. Nationalist. Insurrectionist. Domestic terrorist. Extremist. 'Far' rightist. And a homophobe. And a Nazi. Who is bitter. And clinging to a gun and a religion...."

Writes Kimberley A. Strassel, in "Democrats Trash-Talk the Voters/From ‘deplorables’ to ‘garbage,’ contempt doesn’t seem to be a winning message" (Wall Street Journal)(no subscription needed).

And thanks to Strassel for giving me the push I needed to actually watch the ad they got Julia Roberts to do the voice-over for. I laughed a lot:

You can really see how stupid they think the ordinary men and women of America are. I guess it's possible that they meant to exaggerate their low opinion in an ironic way that could make everybody laugh. 

Maybe somewhere in America women have been under men's thumb. I think of P. Diddy parties, things like that.

But also, why would you insult the people you want to influence?

And another thing: I don't believe many men are bullying their wives about voting the "right" way. I think it's a lot more likely that a woman might see how important the election is to her husband and simply choose not to cast a vote that effectively cancels his vote.

"Any pretense of seriousness evaporated last week with the New York Times's expose of the Alitos' breach of flag etiquette...."

"While Justice Alito has stated that he had nothing to do with this flag hoisting, the incident, we are told, somehow amounts to evidence that the Alitos supported Donald Trump's 'stop the steal' campaign. Where does that connection come from? A search of the Factiva news database turns up no articles containing the phrases 'stop the steal' and 'upside down flag' before the Times report on May 16. Rather than retreat in humiliation, the Times doubled down this week with a follow-up report of yet another flag... spotted at the Alitos' vacation home in New Jersey. The left tells us that the 1775 Pine Tree flag was spotted among Jan. 6 protesters! And moreover, that its catch phrase, 'an appeal to heaven,' derives from a radical character —John Locke. The Times somehow fails to let readers know that the flag is a longtime symbol of independence; that it was designed by George Washington's secretary; was flown on ships commissioned by Washington; has been honored, commemorated and flown over state capitols; and is the official maritime flag of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts...."

Writes Kimberley A. Strassel, in "A Flagging Campaign Against Justice Alito/The ‘ethics’ attack having failed, the left turns to flag etiquette" (Wall Street Journal).

"If it is felony 'election interference' for a candidate to try to keep private the details of a seamy relationship, what other candidate concealments — of a lawful and entirely personal nature — must be reported?"

"Must the out-of-pocket settlement for that fender-bender be disclosed, since it conceals a candidate's bad driving skills? How about plastic surgery, since it masks the true ravages of age or health?... The Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign in 2016 paid an opposition-research firm to produce a bogus dossier that accused Mr. Trump of collusion with Russia. They fed it to the FBI and leaked it to the public prior to the 2016 election. The DNC and Mrs. Clinton's campaign reported the expenditures to the Federal Election Commission but concealed their true nature by describing the payments as 'legal' services, as Mr. Trump did with his NDA. The FEC fined them for the deception, but under Mr. Bragg's theory it should count as criminal election interference."

Writes Kimberley A. Strassel, in "Alvin Bragg and Democrats' 'Election Interference'/His theory in New York state’s Trump case is crazier than you think" (Wall Street Journal).

"Nearly 50% of elites believe the U.S. provides 'too much individual freedom' — compared with nearly 60% of voters who believe there is too much 'government control.'"

"Seventy-seven percent of elites support 'strict rationing of gas, meat, and electricity' to fight climate change, vs. 28% of everyone else. More than two-thirds of elite Ivy graduates favor banning things like gasoline-powered cars and stoves and inessential air travel in the name of the environment. More than 70% of average voters say they'd be unwilling to pay more than $100 a year in taxes or costs for climate -- compared with 70% of elites who said they'd pay from $250 up to 'whatever it takes.'... While this elite is small, its members are prominent in every major institution of American power, from media to universities to government to Wall Street, and have become more intent on imposing their agenda from above. Many American voters feel helplessly under assault from policies that ignore their situation or values."

Writes Kimberley Strassel, in "The Them-vs.-Us Election" (Wall Street Journal).

"Meet the biggest and baddest new power broker in the 2024 presidential contest: an unelected and unenthusiastic U.S. Supreme Court."

"If this thought sits a bit uneasily, blame the lawfaring leftists who engineered the sandbagging of the nation's top jurists.... Embittered by electoral losses, unwilling to trust the will of voters, the left now routinely turns to extraordinary legal action in hopes of pressing the courts to impose its political objectives by judicial fiat. Every party to these high-stakes, highly speculative cases knew exactly where this would end. And not one cares a whit for the consequences for the high court.... The biggest question now is whether the three liberal justices understand the grave risks of this lawfaring agenda... Do they sign up for the campaign with opinions that justify novel legal theories and the judicial usurpation of elections -- in the process inviting more special counsels, more rogue court decisions, more litigation? Or do they recognize this game for what it is, acknowledge the sound legal reasons for why no one has attempted such reckless prosecutions and lawsuits before, and send a message it needs to stop?"

Writes Kimberley A. Strassel in "Sandbagging the Supreme Court" (Wall Street Journal).

"Mr. Biden was given ample opportunity to deny the authenticity or facts of the Bobulinski information at Thursday’s debate; he didn’t..."

"... A call to Hunter Biden’s attorney was not returned by our deadline. All of this is news. The press corps that is ignoring it spent four years writing about Donald Trump’s Moscow business. The correspondence meanwhile blows up Rep. Adam Schiff’s claim that the Hunter story is Russian 'disinformation.' It raises real concerns about what security risks Hunter might pose for a Biden administration. And it raises questions about Joe Biden’s involvement. The former vice president is running on trust and good judgment. The Hunter tale is at best the story of a wayward son and indulgent father. At worst, it is an example of the entire Biden clan cashing in on its name with a U.S. rival...."

From "The Biden ‘Family Legacy’/What we learned from the text messages of Hunter’s partner Tony Bobulinski" by Kimberley Strassel (Wall Street Journal). No paywall encountered. Lots of detail about what's in the texts — too much to cut and paste.

"The Steele dossier was central to obtaining the Page warrant, and the leaks about the dossier fanned two years of media theories about Russian collusion..."

"... that was one reason Mr. Mueller was appointed as special counsel. Mr. Mueller owed the public an explanation of how much of the dossier could be confirmed or repudiated. Instead he abdicated, and the mystery is why. Perhaps as a former FBI director, Mr. Mueller wanted to protect the bureau's reputation... A less generous explanation is that Mr. Mueller was more a figurehead as special counsel, and that the investigation was really run by his deputy Andrew Weissmann.... On the evidence in the Horowitz report, the special counsel team had to know the truth about the Steele dossier and false FBI claims to the FISA court, but they chose to look the other way."

From "Robert Mueller's Dossier Dodge," an editorial in the Wall Street Journal.

And also in the Wall Street Journal from "FISA Court Owes Some Answers" by Kimberley Strassel in the Wall Street Journal:

Presiding Judge Rosemary Collyer... blasted the FBI for misleading the court ...  The order depicts a court stunned to discover that the FBI failed in its "duty of candor," and angry it was duped. That's disingenuous. To buy it, you'd have to believe that not one of the court's 11 members -- all federal judges -- caught a whiff of this controversy until now. More importantly, you'd have to ignore that the court was directly informed of the FBI's abuses nearly two years ago....

[The court is] predictably pointing fingers at the FBI, but the court should itself account for its failure to provide more scrutiny, and its refusal to act when [Congressman Devin] Nunes first exposed the problem [in February 2018, when he was chair of the House Intelligence Committee]. The FBI is far from alone in this disgrace.

"The Pelosi impeachment resolution was supposed to deprive the GOP of its complaint that the process wasn't formal. Instead, it formalized a rigged process..."

"... and gives Republicans a solid rationale for rejecting the entire proceeding. Democrats gripe that the GOP refuses to talk about the substance of the case against the president. But it is Democrats who have made that impossible, given the secrecy and one-sided approach. Due process is at the heart of America's system of ordered liberty, and the 'evidence' Democrats are secretly compiling in the basement of the House is already soiled. That's why every House Republican -- even vulnerable ones -- felt confident in voting 'no' on Thursday's resolution. Republicans pointed out that even as Democrats were claiming the vote meant 'transparency,' Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff was holding another closed hearing, to which most of the House and the president's legal counsel weren't privy. 'Democrats cannot fix this process,' said House GOP Conference Chair Liz Cheney after the vote. 'This is a process that has been fundamentally tainted.'"

Writes Kimberley Strassel in "A Partisan Impeachment Vote" (WSJ). She notes that when the House impeached Bill Clinton, there was a motion to dismiss in the Senate. The motion was voted down, so the Senate went on to conduct its idea of a trial, so the Democrats established a precedent for a motion to dismiss, and — Strassel says — the GOP majority in the Senate could vote yes on such a motion in the Trump case, based on the unfairness of the process in the House.

"Nowhere is the left more nuts than on climate. Biden, the 'reasonable' person on stage, says 'no more fossil fuels'..."

"...in his presidency. Think about this, folks. No oil, gas, coal. No diesel trucks, airplanes, fighter jets, chainsaws."

Tweets Kimberley Strassel.

I couldn't believe it when I heard it last night:

BIDEN: We will end any subsidies for coal or any other fossil fuel. But we have to also engage the world while we're doing it. We have to walk and chew gum at the same time.

BASH: Thank you, Mr. Vice President. Just to clarify, would there be any place for fossil fuels, including coal and fracking, in a Biden administration?

BIDEN: No, we would -- we would work it out. We would make sure it's eliminated and no more subsidies for either one of those, either -- any fossil fuel.

I said out loud at the time: "So, no more airplanes?"

To be fair, I think it's likely that Biden understood the question to mean is there any place for government subsidies and that's all he's thinking of eliminating. Alternatively, he means to eliminate coal and he uses the term "fossil fuel" without realizing it includes oil and gas.

***

Here's the etymology of the word "fossil":

1610s, "any thing dug up;" 1650s (adj.) "obtained by digging" (of coal, salt, etc.), from French fossile (16c.), from Latin fossilis "dug up," from fossus, past participle of fodere "to dig," from PIE root *bhedh- "to dig, pierce."

Restricted noun sense of "geological remains of a plant or animal" is from 1736 (the adjective in the sense "pertaining to fossils" is from 1660s); slang meaning "old person" first recorded 1859. Fossil fuel (1833) preserves the earlier, broader sense.

That slang usage — meaning "old person" — could be used on Biden. Maybe he's the fossil that should be rejected.

Anyway, the first usage of "fossil" in the figurative sense referred to the government. It was Ralph Waldo Emerson (in 1844): "Government has been a fossil; it should be a plant."

The first use to refer to a person came from Charlotte Brontë (in 1857): "When a man endures patiently what ought to be unendurable, he is a fossil."

***

What Biden was said was dumb, and while he was saying it, he evoked an old expression about dumbness. He said, "We have to walk and chew gum at the same time." The original line was "He's so dumb that he can't walk and chew gum at the same time." That was a President talking about a man who later became President. LBJ said it about Gerald Ford. Or so the fit-to-print newspapers reported. It's necessary to add that he really said "He's so dumb that he can't fart and chew gum at the same time."

Ridiculous bullshit.

Beware of ridiculous bullshit from the usual sources of ridiculous bullshit, especially when it looks and smells exactly like ridiculous bullshit. https://t.co/ds7BBiUE79

— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) April 4, 2019

"The most obnoxious spin of the 2016 campaign came this week, as Democrats, their media allies and even President Obama accused the FBI of stacking the election."

"It’s an extraordinary claim, coming as it does from the same crew that has—we now know—been stacking the election all along in the corridors of the Justice Department," writes Kimberley Strassel in The Wall Street Journal.

"There’s nothing that special or even good about the government-run primary process."

"The delegates have been going to conventions for years and treating them like Super Bowl parties because there was nothing else to do... But this year they have the opportunity to practice a great national tradition, to exercise their legal, historical right to defeat a man who opposes most of what they believe in, and instead nominate a candidate who represents them.... I’m interested in self-governance, in having people learn what it is that they own, and then exercising that power. Our citizens have been turned into spectators—it’s what the left wants.... This is about taking back the private party system... it is a voluntary organization and it sets its own rules... [Picture the delegates] in Cleveland, grasping their legal and historical right to nominate the most powerful person in the world....The delegates may not know it, but they will not only be saving the Republican Party and the country—they’ll be reviving a tradition of self-governance."

Says Eric O’Keefe, quoted by Kimberley A. Strassel in the WSJ in "The Case for a Really Open GOP Convention/The man who defeated Wisconsin prosecutors now says party delegates have the right to choose any nominee they want, and they should use it."

Donald Trump didn't bother to understand Wisconsin, and Wisconsin seems to mind.

Maybe you think we're a frumpy pathetic rustbelt backwater and we'd be happy that you showed up at all and acted like you cared.

But it's not that way at all. The WSJ's Kimberley A. Strassel does a great job of summing up Wisconsin GOP politics for outsiders:

Wisconsin has been in continuous political warfare for six years. Over that time, Republicans lived through Gov. Scott Walker’s epic battle for his Act 10 public-sector bargaining reform; judicial races; a Senate recall effort; a gubernatorial recall effort; a political assault in a vicious John Doe probe; another election cycle; campaign-finance reform; an overhaul of the state’s ethics body; a right-to-work law; and prevailing-wage reform. To name a few.

The state is also proudly home to the speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, and a governor (Scott Walker) who ran for his party's presidential nomination. The result is a conservative electorate that is highly informed, highly energized and highly involved. The fights so far have given voters an acute appreciation of the conservative principles at stake, and a pride in defeating union and liberal priorities. They have radar sensitive to “fake” Republicans, and many aren’t keen on what they are hearing from Mr. Trump.

Wisconsin’s recent political battles also resulted in a dramatic shift in the state’s communications culture.... Four “talkers” in particular— Charlie Sykes, Vicki McKenna, Jerry Bader and Mark Belling—exercise enormous influence, and cover nearly every inch of the state media market....

Mr. Trump stumbled onto three of the four biggest shows on Monday, seemingly unaware that all the hosts are part of the “Never Trump” movement. Mr. Sykes likened Mr. Trump to a “12-year-old bully” and insisted he was no conservative. Ms. McKenna was similarly rough, though Mr. Trump did himself no favors by hanging up on her.

He’s also won no votes by lambasting both Mr. Walker and Paul Ryan. Mr. Trump might have been looking at Mr. Walker’s statewide approval numbers (in the 40s) and figured that hitting Mr. Walker’s tax cuts was smart politics. But the governor’s approval with Republicans is significantly higher—likely in the 70% to 80% range.

Mr. Ryan also is widely liked and admired among Republicans in the state, in particular because he still actively engages in state battles. He regularly goes on talk radio; he has openly supported Walker reforms; he helps out state legislative candidates. Mr. Cruz, by contrast to Mr. Trump, clearly was well briefed on the broader environment. His praise of Messrs. Walker and Ryan earns him strong applause at events, and he’s grasped the power of the state radio....

Cruz (and his people) seem to do much better at grasping complexity and dealing with it. I have no reason to believe either Trump or Cruz cares much about Wisconsin other than as just one more state to appease and gratify, but the 2 men are revealing quite a lot about their mental capacity and competence. To govern, you have to maintain your stamina and attention to all sorts of elaborate problems that are not intrinsically emotionally rewarding, like caring about Wisconsin.

This morning on "Fox News Sunday," Hillary Clinton's surrogates failed her badly.

Earlier today, I said that "Lanny Davis (on 'Fox News Sunday') was the definition of flop sweat," and now I have the transcript. You need the video [HERE] to get the full effect of Davis's agitation and aggression, which is heightened by his blindingly white, fake-looking teeth. Davis was combative and insulting, and resorted to assertions like: "Hillary Clinton today is the most popular politician in the country. And you're discussing a non-scandal, nothing illegal, full access. And it's all politics."

Also on the show to defend Hillary was Neera Tanden, president of the Center for American Progress. Like Davis, she let the stress show and it undercut her arguments (especially as Kimberley Strassel, sitting right next to her, kept giving her the stink eye and undercutting her with quick surgical strikes):

WALLACE: [T]he rules were pretty clear, your e-mails should be preserved.... You think that's with keeping of the spirit if you don't turn these over while you're secretary of state, you don't turn them over when you leave as secretary of state? You don't turn them over until two years after you leave, and it's only after the State Department lawyers confront you?

TANDEN: OK, that's also faster than any previous secretary of state passed over the e-mails... So, I'm saying that now we'll be able to see, turned over, taking the act of actually turning over the e-mails to the public. I think let's, you know, I know it's hard to imagine, but let's take a breath, she what are in those e-mails and then decide.

STRASSEL: Well, the e-mails she's chosen to give to the State Department.

TANDEN: Well, just to be clear about this. If a cabinet secretary today was using private and public e-mail, right, and the other cabinet secretary, they're making the decision when they decide to use public e-mail, right? So, that's the decision they're making. There's no private -- there's no public record of their private e-mail.

STRASSEL: Which is exactly why the Obama administration said use your government e-mail –

TANDEN: Where appropriate –

STRASSEL: -- because these e-mails belong to the public. They don't belong to them.

TANDEN: Exactly. And she's turning them over. So, that's what we'll see.

STRASSEL: The ones she chose to turn in.

Strassel ruled that exchange.

Wallace then turned to George Will and asks him "How big a deal is this?"

GEORGE WILL: It's big because it is axiomatic that the worst political scandals are those that reinforce a pre-existing negative perception... The Clintons come trailing clouds of entitlement and concealment, and legalistic, Jesuitical reasoning, the kind of people who could find a loophole in a stop sign. The -- her obvious motive was to conceal. You conceal in order to control. And that's what makes this literally, strictly speaking, Orwellian. In George Orwell's novel "Nineteen Eighty-Four", Oceania's regime, the totalitarian regime had an axiom, "He who controls the past controls the future. And he who controls the present controls the past." This is a way of controlling what we will know about the history of our country and it is deeply sinister.

Tanden attempts damage control and it's quite painful (though funny):

TANDEN: Orwell, sinister, I mean, why don't we ask her, instead of attacking and deriding. See the e-mail and then make judgment.

STRASSEL: Why do you think she did it?

WALLACE: But don't you agree that there's a problem –

TANDEN: This is unbelievable to me, Orwellian. We can all use these words –

WALLACE: -- when the e-mails we're going to see, these 55,000 pages, are only what she and her lawyers decided to turn over.

TANDEN: Again, they're the public e-mails. She has e-mails I'm sure about the bridesmaids dresses. Do we have a right to see those e-mails? She has friends like me that said, how is my sister doing? Do we have the right to see those?

See how Tanden is unwittingly making the argument against Clinton? It's quite obvious at this point that Clinton has reserved for herself the power to determine which of the mixed public and private emails will be called public and handed over. What's to stop her from putting anything she doesn't want us to see in the private category? Benghazi... bridesmaids... what's the difference?  Wallace drives this home:

WALLACE: No, but I'm saying to you that she sat there -- what if there's an e-mail about Benghazi and she gets –

TANDEN: And that's what the lawyers will see those, exactly.

WALLACE: Not if she didn't turn them over.

TANDEN: The State Department going to see those e-mails and any e-mail on Benghazi to a public e-mail, other people had documentation as well.

STRASSEL: So, you're saying the State Department is going to see her server?

TANDEN: No, I'm saying that –

(CROSSTALK)

WALLACE: What do you think bout the idea of allowing an independent person to go in as you heard Lanny Davis talk about to see her server?

TANDEN: So, I would just see what the e-mails we have are and make decisions on that. We have two years into a presidential cycle, why don't we actually get these e-mails out in the public and see if there's a -- we will have more public e-mails. We'll have more e-mails public than any secretaries of state in the history –

STRASSEL: Possibly none that actually matter?

TANDEN: No, not possibly none that actually matter.

WALLACE: Let me bring Juan in-- Juan.

JUAN WILLIAMS, FOX NEWS POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, I must say first of all, Hillary Clinton seems to me to be very entitled and privileged and she broke the rules. So, I don't think there are any questions. As to whether or not she broke the law, that's not clear.

WALLACE: I agree.

WILLIAMS: But I will say this, in terms of the politics of 2016, which is really what I think we're driving at here, is that Hillary Clinton scares Republicans to death. I think that's what we've seen. Initially Democrats, including the Obama White House this week, did not defend Hillary Clinton, because the Obama White House wanted to make it clear they had set a clear rules of the road for Hillary Clinton, and they backed off. There was radio silence. I was over there this week. Radio silence on this. But by the end of the week, with all of this talk of subpoenas on Benghazi, and then all of the stuff about, doesn't this remind you of how technical and Orwellian the Clintons are -- suddenly, the Democrats, and we see this with Neera this morning, have become more defensive. And I think the idea is, you know what? Republicans are feasting, they are in a frenzy. They think this is Watergate redux, and it's not.

WALLACE: OK. But you know sometimes when you feast, it's Thanksgiving.

Criticizing Scott Walker as too much of a one-man show.

It's Kimberley Strassel in the Wall Street Journal —  channeling "Republican leaders" — in a piece subtitled "He went into the midterm just one name on a presidential short list, but came out the buzz":

What still gives a lot of Republican leaders pause about Scott Walker is, well, Scott Walker. The Wisconsin dynamo is good, but the knock on him is that he knows it. He has a reputation as a one-man band, serving these past four years as his own chief speechwriter, chief policy aide, chief fundraiser, and chief political analyst. He is known to listen to a few trusted Wisconsin gurus—like consultant R.J. Johnson—but for the most part is anti-team effort....

Even Ronald Reagan, as savvy and principled as they came, knew the value of surrounding himself with advisers who knew things he didn’t. Republicans remain concerned by how unprepared, or unwilling, Mr. Walker seems to be to switch up to a presidential-run mentality, noting that he relied in this crucial re-election on an ad hoc campaign group, rather than using it to ramp up a pre-presidential team. His tendency to insularity also makes them worry what personnel choices he will make if and when he gets around to it.

This issue of personnel and advisers matters since it goes to the heart of Mr. Walker’s greatest challenge: Proving he can rise to the stature of a national presidential figure, and be something more than a statewide politician. As governors go he’s the anti-Chris Christie. The New Jersey governor is big on talk, less on policy. Mr. Walker is big on substance . . . and Midwestern flat.

It sounds like there are a lot of consultants looking for jobs who have Ms. Strassel's ear.

Come on, Democrats, please, attack Hillary!

Kimberley A. Strassel looks for weakness in Hillary Clinton's campaign:

Mr. Obama has come the closest to delving into Mrs. Clinton's past, though you need an Enigma machine to decode it. His campaign slogan is "Change We Can Believe In." (Translation: If you elect her, don't be surprised what she discovers in a box under a table.) He's mused about "character and judgment." (Translation: I don't trade in cattle futures.) Freudian psychology this is, Mortal Kombat it is not. Yet while the squeaky clean Mr. Obama may be best positioned to make a moral case against Mrs. Clinton, his own "politics of hope" has made it difficult to pull out the brass knuckles.

The rest of Mrs. Clinton's opponents fear an attack on her ethics would backfire, allowing her to paint herself as a female victim. You can bet they've studied the video of Rick Lazio, Mrs. Clinton's 2000 Senate opponent, invading her debate space, and Mrs. Clinton's ensuing performance as flinching, defenseless woman. (Mr. Lazio sank like a rock.) She has suggested she's not above a repeat act, dispatching Bill to warn that "the boys" were being awfully "tough" on his wife.

This made me want to go study the video myself, but I couldn't find it. Is it just me, or is that video hard to find on line? Does she really act "flinching" and "defenseless" after Lazio's idiotic invasion-of-the-space? In any case, her "repeat act" about "the boys" ganging up on her failed miserably, so what is Strassel's point?

Some Democrats seem to be relying on Republicans to raise the character question. But liberal voters aren't listening to Rudy Giuliani or Mitt Romney, and if they were, they'd view GOP persecution as added reason to vote for her. Mrs. Clinton thinks so, having just unveiled an ad featuring Romney and McCain attacks.

The Democratic debate has grown more personal in past days, with the barbs hitting ever closer to home. Whether this carries into a tougher discussion on Mrs. Clinton's character, who knows? It may just be inevitable.

Come on, Democrats, please, attack Hillary!

Sorry, Hillary made me say that.