As Joe noted below, a day devoted to talking about the adultery of a Clinton superdelegate isn't what the Clinton campaign needs right now. More from ABC. Why? Because it reminds people of big, public, political adultery scandals, like Monica, and makes people potentially less likely to want to go there again in terms of putting the Clintons back in the White House. It doesn't matter if YOU think Ken Starr was a witch hunt. A lot of Americans were kind of fed up with all sides during that business, and any talk of adultery may remind them that Camelot wasn't all fun and games, or rather, too much of it was. Jacki Schechner, who is now blogging with us, delved into the Monica-thing a few days ago on her blog here.
As an aside, one of our readers mentioned that it doesn't help Obama that the news is now not about his Mississippi win. That's true. But I think this hurts Hillary more, and here's why. The media would most likely downplay Mississippi anyway - it's a majority black state, not many delegates, Obama was expected to win anyway, doesn't really advance his delegate lead over Hillary that much, blah blah blah. But, I think Spitzer hurts Hillary, the challenger, more than the front-runner. Why? Because the news cycle is about Spitzer rather than her. Hillary needs to shake things up, to change the dynamic somehow, if she's going to get the superdelegates to switch away from the current front runner, the guy with the most elected delegates. You can't do that when the news is focused elsewhere. And worse, when it's focused on adultery, an issue that just invites the media, and 3rd parties, to ridicule you. Imagine Jay Leno and Jon Stewart. There aren't a lot of jokes you can make about Obama and adultery, but the Clintons? This doesn't help her.
UPDATE: Joe just pointed out to me that the Washington Post article includes Clinton-oriented Spitzer jokes that are already coming out of Leno and Letterman, as I suspected would happen:
Jay Leno joked Monday night that Spitzer's scandal "means Hillary Clinton is now only the second angriest woman in the state of New York." David Letterman offered a Top 10 List of excuses Spitzer might cite, including the No. 1 excuse: "I thought Bill Clinton legalized this years ago."
This is why this scandal will hurt Hillary more than Obama.
