The Dem primary continues on its inscrutable ways

After the Read More! The Clintons keep the pardon papers locked in the library. Fausta looks at who will win the Puerto Rico Dem Primary. An Obama adviser withdraws her characterization of Hillary as a "monster".

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Captain Ed writes of the Clinton decision to keep the legacy secret: "Hillary is a curious candidate. She wants to run on her “experience” as First Lady in the Clinton administration — but she wants us to see as little evidence of that experience as possible. In fact, she says that “experience” is so compelling that we would want her in the White House answering the phone at 3 AM when a crisis occurs. If it really is that impressive, why is she and Bill going to such lengths to hide it? The pardons present a very tricky problem for Hillary. That really does speak to the character of the Clinton administration, and obviously not in glowing terms."

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If the race between Obama and Clinton becomes close enough, Puerto Rico may play a pivotal role. Fausta writes, "Puerto Ricans living in the island do not vote in the US Presidential elections. Puerto Ricans living in the fifty states do." But it has 8 superdelegates and 55 of the regular kind. "So here we have the Democrat party candidate for President possibly being decided by people who aren't voting for him/her."

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Rick Pearson reports the Obama campaign in damage control mode. "Sen. Barack Obama suffered another foreign policy snafu with one of his advisers, who told a newspaper that his rival, Sen. Hillary Clinton, was a 'monster' who is 'stooping to anything' to try to win the Democratic presidential nomination. Samantha Power, who is advising the Obama campaign, made the comments to the Scotsman newspaper of Scotland. Power later apologized and Obama said there was no place in his campaign for such descriptions of his opponent."

Obama might have said, "Hillary's not a monster. As far as I know." But his disavowal was much more categorical. He is controlling the message, after two successive incidents of staff straying from the talking points. The talking points are one thing; but what in fact does Obama know or think about Hillary or NAFTA? Does Samantha Power's characterization of Hillary as a 'monster' tell us anything about the buzz in Obama's inner circle?

Here's my guess. Politics involves multiple narratives and public figures have to tell different stories to different people. That's the definition of their occupation. The more skillful the politician the greater the variety of stories he can tell without actually lying. Or at least without being caught lying.

The problem voters face is deciding which of the multiple personalities the candidates serve up on the platform is the real one. Or maybe they're all real. That would make more sense.

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It was quite a challenge to find video clip that would tie together the themes of Puerto Rico, monsters and secret archives described above. But here's a B-movie clip whose plotline involves "NASA astronaut Col. Frank Saunders-- who happens to be an experimental android-- shot down by an alien warship. Frank survives the attack, crash-landing on Puerto Rico. The space aliens—led by Princess Marcuzan and her putty-eared lieutenant, Dr. Nadir -- decide he must die, so they give chase, but manage to only disfigure him before commencing with their ultimate endeavor: steal bikini-clad young women to re-populate their nuclear-ravaged planet!"

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