Awww, does it hurt much?

After its candidate got caught in a cross-fire from her Democratic rivals in a debate last week, the Clinton campaign started boo-hooing about how the guys were all ganging up on her. Geraldine Ferraro, the party's 1984 Vice-Presidential nominee, said "“It’s O.K. in this country to be sexist. It’s certainly not O.K. to be racist. I think if Barack Obama had been attacked for two hours — well, I don’t think Barack Obama would have been attacked for two hours.”

If Obama does become the Democratic front-runner (as I hope), he should be subject to hard questions, challenges and legitimate criticism from his rivals, and if his camp calls it racism he should be called to account for that, too. The gantlet that the leading candidate must endure is part of the campaign process--the means by which the American people decide who is the best of the available candidates to be president.

Does anyone think that if Hillary were running third in the polls she would have been the focus of last week's debate? Of course not. It's because she's out front, not because she is a woman, that she was subjected to attacks from so many of the other candidates. The only sexism lies in the Clinton campaign's response to what the other candidates said about her.

While we're on the subject of the campaign, there is one criticism of Hillary and Bill Clinton that appears to be an error: that they have worked to withhold papers from the Clinton administration until 2012. Critics have focused on a sentence in a letter from Bill Clinton stating that most of his papers are "subject to withholding," and should be reviewed before disclosure. While that might appear to mean that the papers should be kept secret, in the context of the law that applies to presidential records it is actually a request for review that must precede release of the materials; the Clintons argue--convincingly, I think, that they are really seeking early disclosure, not trying to hide information.

Is it being catty to suggest that this story got some legs because it seems like the kind of thing that Hillary would do? OK, then: Meow.

One final note: Democrats will probably let this go now--as they should. But what would the GOPhers d0? Indeed, can we not expect to see this canard revived if Clinton becomes the Democratic nominee next year? And much more, to boot. It's a sad commentary on the state of the republic that Democrats need to search their closets not only for material that might be the stuff of scandal, but for any dust bunnies that could be spun into a seeming shame by a well-funded political operation for which truth is but a minor obstacle.