Truth or Dare

Which candidate will emerge the spinnable winner once the votes from the North Carolina and Indiana primaries are counted?

With it be the truth teller or the liar? And if it's the liar, what does it say about the Democratic Party?

Pandering is, indeed, a deep, deep character issue. Per Mark Kleiman:

A correspondent thinks I've missed the main point about both "obliterate Iran" and the gas tax holiday. For Clinton, who has run on being the grown-up, experienced policy wonk in the race, the willingness to talk complete nonsense when the situation is desperate not only contradicts her major claim to office, it raises serious questions about her character. Her behavior on those issues has, by contrast with the behavior of the Democratic candidate, profoundly un-Presidential.

Don't think the GOP won't use it against her should she steal the nomination.

And it turns out that it was none other than her husband who raised the gas tax -- per Lawrence O'Donnell, who was in his Administration:

Bill Clinton raised the gas tax and no one in the political press seems to remember that, including George Stephanopoulos, who helped him do it.

Most political reporters obviously have no idea that in his first year in office President Bill Clinton raised the gas tax. He did it in a package of tax increases that amounted to the biggest tax increase in history, and after a presidential campaign whose centerpiece was a middle class tax cut that he forgot about once in office. If reporters knew that President Clinton raised gas taxes by 4.3 cents, they would be peppering Hillary and Bill with questions about the Clinton gas tax hike like, if you think gas taxes are too high now, are you in favor of repealing the Clinton nickel?

Not only that, but it turns out her husband also made $24,000,000 more than she disclosed:

Hillary Clinton listed Bill's income for 2004, 2005 and 2006 as "over $1000". This was legal under campaign finance law, but hid a substantial amount of Bill and Hillary's income. It hid approximately 24 million dollars of income.

WASHINGTON — Sen. Hillary Clinton excluded nearly $24 million of her husband's earnings from Senate financial statements from 2004 through 2006, capitalizing on rules that permit senators to limit disclosures of some of their spouses' income.

Moreover, Bill has apparently received more than $11 million from Yucaipa partnership which is invested heavily in Chinese government corporations. The Clinton's trade relationship with China has paid off big time.

How about the very suspicious voter-suppression-style robo-calls in North Carolina:

Voters and watchdog groups complained about the calls, and North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper ordered them to stop on Wednesday. Some saw a turnout-suppression conspiracy because the group's allies include so many Clinton supporters, especially Podesta and Williams.

On Friday, Barack Obama's campaign weighed in by circulating the transcript of a National Public Radio report on the calls. It noted that the North Carolina calls seemed to heavily skew to African Americans, including many women who had already registered, causing them to question whether they were eligible to vote in the primary on Tuesday.

My prediction is that should she somehow win the nomination and the election, Hillary Clinton's Administration will end up being the most litigated against since Richard Nixon's, starting with investigations over the election.

And a helluva lot of Democrats won't be standing up for her.