It’s interesting to see Hillary Clinton evidently attempting to make the sort of criticism of JFK that I blogged on Saturday. It’s a natural argument for her to make; that Barack Obama is, just as his fans say, like JFK and that’s a bad thing. But based on my experience of trying to argue that being “like Kennedy” isn’t necessarily what you want in a president, this is unlikely to persuade tons of people.

[I don't really think the analogy holds up though in either direction -- the legislative circumstances surrounding the Civil Rights Act were really quite unlike anything you'd ever see today. What's more, she really does seem to me to be slighting the crucial role of social movements in setting the conditions for things to happen.]

I wouldn’t be surprised if this inane “Clinton crying” pseudo-story winds up redounding to her benefit; it’s a stark reminder of how much sexist BS there is out there which, in turn, gets people back to thinking about how the first woman president in American history would be a pretty damn transformative event all on its own terms.

UPDATE: Indeed.

The Supreme Court today declined to review a ruling by the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals, which struck down Michigan’s ban on so-called “partial-birth” abortions. The Court’s move effectively outlaws the state’s ban on the procedure, although the Court upheld a similar federal law banning the technique last April.

Today, the Wall Street Journal notes that CNN’s Lou Dobbs is increasingly being mentioned as a potential independent presidential candidate by pundits such as Robert Novak. Dobbs’s response:

Mr. Dobbs says he isn’t planning to run. “I haven’t got the personality or nature to be a politician,” he said in an interview Thursday. But he makes clear he hasn’t ruled out the idea. “I cannot say never,” he said.

Dobbs himself also “fanned the presidential speculation in November, posting a column on CNN’s Web site that floated the idea that a surprise candidate was poised to enter the race.”

I think it bears mentioning that it’s always worth trying to not overread the trends. A month ago, it looked like Hillary Clinton would probably win the nomination. At the same time, it was clear back then that Obama wasn’t prohibitively far behind in Iowa or anything. And it was clear that winning Iowa would give him a big edge in winning in New Hampshire. And it was also clear that if Obama swept Iowa and New Hampshire, the powerful culinary workers union was unlikely to back Clinton. And it was also clear that if Obama won in two lily-white states, that the odds favored African-Americans flocking to his banner in South Carolina. And it was clear that all that would create a lot of momentum working against Clinton moving into the big states.

We knew all that, but because it looked like Obama probably wouldn’t win Iowa, that pro-Obama cascade looked unlikely. Then Obama did win Iowa, making the cascade look likely. And I think it is the most probable outcome. But just as Obama once looked like he would lose in Iowa and then won, just because Clinton looks down now hardly makes it impossible for her to recover. In particular, I think there’s an important sense in which Edwards is doing more to split the regular/warrior/beer track vote than he is to split an anti-Clinton vote, which is one reason that I haven’t felt too torn up about my divided affections for both Edwards and Obama. But if Edwards doesn’t build up any profile in the February 5 states, I think a head-to-head matchup is much trickier for Obama. The risk for Clinton is that her network of supporters might melt down before then, or else that Edwards’ message might start to break through in a wider array of states and make it difficult for Clinton to consolidate a coalition of working class whites and Latinos.

Meanwhile, if there’s such a thing as an anti-Obama constituency inside the party, it seems to me that Edwards would probably have an easier time beating Obama in a two-person race than would Clinton since in a lot of ways he’s much better-situated to lead a working class counterinsurgency against Obama’s fancy-pants fan club.