Charlie Pierce on Altercation:

As I was watching the debate the other night — the Democratic one where Anderson Cooper came on afterwards and got to pretend to be Angelo Dundee — I was struck by Senator Obama’s resolute assertion that he was the candidate that can come to Washington and work with “independents and Republicans” to get things done. (One of his new ads has him sitting next to Dick Lugar, a Republican senator only slightly more relevant today than is Arthur Vandenberg.) I was struck even harder by it as I watched the Democratic Senate go supine, selling out poor Chris Dodd and the Constitution, and concocting retroactive alibis for the Telecom giants in a week where we finally got the empirical count of prewar Iraq lies. Here’s my deal with His Barackosity. Take the list of Republican congresscritters, House and Senate. Make me a list of 10 of them with whom you think you can work to achieve anything close to the progressive goals you have said you want to achieve. Give me an honest run, and I guarantee you that you can’t do it. You may get “something done” but it’s not going to have anything to do with anything resembling the values of the party you seek to represent. This is a party that has to be forcibly disenthralled from its lunatic base.

Let’s make it clear, Obama has a fairly unique background, and he’s a bright guy, he was the head of the bleeding Harvard Law Review.

He has been dazzling people for years to convince them to get his way, and if someone does not hate you with a blinding white hot passion, it frequently works.

Republicans live on that level of hate.

They hated Bill and Hillary, etc. too.