I was mulling over the ABC debate this morning and the moderators’ claim that knocking Obama with a more or less uninterrupted stream of Swift Boat gotchas was justified by focusing the debate on ‘electability’. And it occurred to me that we have now crossed an important threshold where the Republican operative cadre has sufficiently disciplined and trained the press (and more than a few Democrats) that their own role may simply be redundant.

Think about it. Organized campaigns of falsehoods, distortions and smears used to be something most people thought of as a bad thing, if not something that’s ever been too far removed from American politics. Now, however, members of the prestige press appear to see it not as a matter of guilty slumming but rather a positive journalistic obligation to engage in their own organized campaign of falsehood, distortion and smear on the reasoning that it anticipates the eventual one to be mounted by Republicans. In other words, we’ve gotten past the debatable rationale that journalists have no choice but to cover smears and distortions once they’re floated into the mainstream debate to thinking that journalists need to seek out and air smears and distortions on the grounds of electability, as though the mid-summer GOP Swiftboating was another de facto part of the election process like primaries, conventions and debates.

It’s an expansive rationale under which Gibson and Stephanopoulos may have failed their civic responsibility by not pressing the point of whether Obama is a hereditary Muslim or his mother had a predilection for dark-skinned socialists.

As I’ve noted it’s pretty nauseating and disillusioning that Sen. Clinton has now also convinced herself that she’s providing a service by mounting her own Swift Boat campaign. But she is after all running a campaign.

In any case, at this stage it’s not even clear the GOP slimesters ever have to come on the field. Journalists recognize their obligation to seek out potential Swift Boat tactics and do the job for them.

We just received a press release from the Obama campaign announcing that former Sens. Nunn (D) and Boren (D) have come out in support of Sen. Obama. This continues to be one of the most striking features of this campaign — the tendency of politicians who do or did make their careers on the votes of people from small towns and rural areas to come out for Obama.

It’s been going on for three months.

I’ve always been highly skeptical of Hillary Clinton’s argument that she’s a stronger candidate in rural areas and red states. But the pols who know these areas best seem to be even more confident she’s wrong than I am.

Over the last four days the Gallup tracking poll has charted Obama’s lead declining from 11 to 8 to 7 to 3.

What if Hillary Clinton released her income tax records showing relatively unremarkable (by senate standards, where almost everyone is fairly wealthy) income and said that Bill files separately and he’s a private person so he wouldn’t be releasing his?

I do not think she’d get a very easy ride from the press since Bill now makes all the money and it’s against his sources of income that any potential conflicts of interest or sources of embarrassment would likely arise.

So why does John McCain get to pull the same stunt with his wife? I was thinking of this when I saw McCain’s tax return release today since I know McCain is actually an extremely wealthy man. His wife is reportedly worth more than $100 million because she is the heir to her father’s beer distributorship, which played a key role in McCain’s political rise. And if you note down on his disclosure page it states that “In the interest of protecting the privacy of her children, Mrs. McCain will not be releasing her personal tax returns.”

You’ve probably seen today the news that Bob Reich, political economist, author and former Clinton Labor Secretary, has endorsed Barack Obama. That’s an honorable and important endorsement. But I want to correct the misimpression some people seem to have that Bob’s endorsement is a defection or that Bob is a Clinton loyalist of any sort.

He’s not. I don’t have any deep insights into the relationship between Bob and the Clintons but since the late 90s he has been in what I would call polite opposition to the Clintons in the context of Democratic politics. Some of this was signaled in his 1998 memoir, Locked in the Cabinet. And just as much in his decision in 1999 to endorse Bill Bradley over Al Gore for the 2000 nomination.

Now the Clintons and Gores have their own issues. But at the time that endorsement was seen, I believe rightly, as part of his desire to turn the page from the Clinton years.

This is such a fraught time in Democratic politics. That it’s easy to have one’s meaning be misunderstood when noting even such a minor point as this. So to be clear, this is not a negative reflection on Obama or Clinton and certainly not Reich who I know and like. It is just to make the small point that this is not a case of someone close to the Clintons politically deciding to jump ship and go with Obama. If anything I would have been very surprised to see him endorsing Hillary.

Ed Kilgore: Face it. Lieberman’s not a Democrat.

Hopefully once the Dems pad their majority in the senate this November, he’ll be expelled from the congressional party. He’s gone well past the point of simply not being acceptable as a Democrat. He’s doing and saying things that would make him disgusting as a Republican. He’s way beyond the pale.

For the first this month, Hillary has slipped ahead of Obama in the Gallup daily tracking poll — by one point.

Prominent Clinton backer circulates how-to for Republicans sliming Obama in the fall over Weather Underground.

From TPM Reader JS …

Much as I, too, would like to read Lieberman out of the Democratic caucus, I’m not sure it is a good idea. You need 60 votes to get something done in the Senate, and the Republicans will be in maximally obstructionist mode come January. I’m pretty sure we will
have at least 54-55 Democrats, and am cautiously optimistic we will be up to 57-58. 60 is very unlikely. Not impossible, but we would have to run the table to get it.

That still means that we have to pick up 3-4 Republicans for each piece of legislation. (You can’t always count on Salazar or the Nelson boys.) If we keep Holy Joe in the caucus, that’s one less vote we would have to scrap for. And that could make an enormous
difference.

The deal: He could still vote any way he wanted on the floor, but would have to vote caucus on cloture to keep his chairmanship. It won’t cost the Ds much. It should be a Democratic administration for the next four years, and Joe is only head of Government Oversight.