Too long, too sleazy, too expensive. That's how a friend described the Democratic primary this morning and I couldn't agree more.

It all started off so inspiring---the Democratic field as a whole was the best in years, and Obama and Clinton in particular were two intelligent, skilled, historic candidates. It was a win-win situation for the Democratic Party. And then, soon after the voting started, the race descended into the gutter.

There's a whole lotta blame to go around. You can blame the Clinton campaign for playing the race card against Obama and pushing every ridiculous guilt-by-association. You can blame right-wing hatchet men for inventing lie after lie about Obama and for smearing the Clintons for twenty years. But much of the blame rests with the so-called mainstream media, particularly tv pundits, for manufacturing scandal after scandal, and then endlessly repeating the coverage under the guise of "news."

ABC's April 16 Democratic debate marked a new low in tabloid coverage of the campaign. If this election is decided by which nominee wears a flag pin every day (the answer: none) or who's more "patriotic," thank Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos.

Yesterday Tim Russert spent the first 18 minutes of Meet the Press asking Obama about Jeremiah Wright. "We ended up spending a lot of time talking about Reverend Wright instead of talking about gas prices and food prices and the situation in Iraq," Obama told Russert. Near the end of the hour-long interview Obama noted, "We haven't talked much about John McCain today."

None of the major pundits have. He's been the official GOP nominee since March and yet they're still treating him with kid gloves.

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