Taking lemons...

The latest polls are indicating a significant (but not unexpected) surge by Barack Obama in New Hampshire, and now Hillary Clinton's campaign is doing its best to spin the bad news into something good.

The MSM appears to be defining the candidates by these terms: Clinton is the "establishment" candidate and Obama is the "change" candidate. Edwards is the "underdog", and Richardson barely rates. And Dennis Kucinich has been relegated to non-viable status by the MSM.

I find it interesting that the entire corporate-media complex has bought into this view without question. Either they like everything to be as simple as possible for public consumption, or they have a hidden agenda here. Or both.

The top news story tonight is the "Obama surge", and in response Bill Clinton spoke in defense of his wife over the weekend, by comparing his presidency to his wife's potential administration. Via the WaPo:

He blamed the news media, in part, for the Iowa outcome, contending that reporters have given a free pass to Senator Obama, who won the caucuses by a convincing eight percentage points.

Yet Mr Clinton remains a rock star among the Democratic Party faithful, and in a weekend speech, he framed his wife's candidacy as a resumption of his own tenure.

"Remember how bad the economy was when I was president?" he joked, touting Hillary Clinton's job-creation agenda. Citing her budget discipline, he noted: "We paid down the debt."

He slipped on velvet gloves to swipe at Senator Obama. "You have to decide what this election is about," Mr Clinton said. "Do you want a feeling of change, do you want the facts of change? … I have never known anybody who can make a more positive difference in more peoples' lives even without a political office.

If you make her president of the United States, there is no limit to what she will achieve. She will make a great, great president."