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During the eight years since Bill Clinton left the White House, he has worked tirelessly to save the lives of children in some of the most miserable places on the planet. He has traveled to Africa more than most of us travel to see relatives, in order to bring much-needed medicines for AIDS and malaria to those who would die without them and to support economic development in places like Rwanda and Malawi. He has used his contacts with philanthropists, billionaires and barons, governments and foundations, to raise hundreds of millions of dollars not for himself, but for those in...

So If McCain wins... 1. Estrich will be drunker than she was after Kerry lost to Bush 2. She will need medication to pull her through Unreal...there's no way America just may not want Obama because he's the biggest liberal/socialist the country has ever seen in a Presidential candidate? I don't see him as a black man...I see him as closer to a communist...so No Vote for him...

It is time for this election to be over. It is time because it has been going on for what feels like a lifetime, because the final days have been full of noise and fury and very little light, and because we need to start solving problems rather than just debating them. It is time because we all know how it should turn out and because thinking about what could happen if it doesn't is too upsetting. Are Democrats in danger of being too confident? The short answer is no. It's no because we've lost too many times when we...

Losing a presidential race is not an easy thing. Losing the primary is one thing. But making it to the finals, so close you can almost taste it, and then watching it slip through your fingers is one of those experiences from which few people ever fully recover. If it's a race for re-election, a first term that doesn't become a second, at least you can go off, build the library and console yourself that you're still a member of the club. If you're young enough, you can convince yourself that there is always next time, four years down the...

"Many question Barack Obama's experience and are now recoiling a little bit at some of the tactics." Video at link

Should a mother with five children, one of them a pregnant teen and another an infant with special needs, be running for vice president? The question is being much debated, in newspaper stories and columns, on blogs and Web sites, and, yes, around kitchen tables across the country.

Women are not fungible. I don’t know if anyone sitting around with John McCain in the last few days has explained that to him; frankly, I don’t know if there even were any women sitting around with John McCain in the last few days. But, I think I understand a few things about Hillary’s base in the Democratic party, and why so many women have been so loyal to her, and if John McCain thinks that simply picking another person with similar anatomy is going to win their votes, he’s about to learn a very important lesson in gender politics....

Women are not fungible. I don’t know if anyone sitting around with John McCain in the last few days has explained that to him; frankly, I don’t know if there even were any women sitting around with John McCain in the last few days. But, I think I understand a few things about Hillary’s base in the Democratic party, and why so many women have been so loyal to her, and if John McCain thinks that simply picking another person with similar anatomy is going to win their votes, he’s about to learn a very important lesson in gender politics....

ust tell me, my friend Kath wants to know, what would have happened if their roles were reversed. If Hillary had won the nomination and Obama had come in a close second, would he have gotten a prime-time speech one night, and Michelle another? Would his name have been placed in nomination right after Michelle’s speech, followed by a roll call vote that will be on Wisconsin before the inevitable winner goes over the top? Would Oprah’s production company be doing his video introduction, without any input from the Clinton crowd that would be controlling every second of the convention?...

Now that it's broken out into the open, there's something about the Edwards-Hunter affair that makes it impossible to ignore. I know all the arguments about how the private lives of politicians should remain private, and that if it's OK with the spouse or spouses, why should we inquire. Truth is, it wasn't so long ago that I was making all those arguments myself. And I'm the first to acknowledge that as much as some of us in the media might like to claim that what's at issue here is not the sex but the lying about it (not to...

Spare me the true believers. I don’t mean the people who support Barack Obama for president. I support Barack Obama for president. I mean the people who worship him to the point that anyone who says anything raising questions about the inevitability of his rise to sainthood, much less the perfection of him and his wife and his campaign, is deserving of damnation. I wrote a column last week about how the Obama campaign needed to guard against the arrogance that many people tell me they have detected in dealing with them. I didn’t condemn the candidate. I didn’t say...

Say it ain't so Joe. I mean, Hillary. I don't believe it. But my friends in Obama-land, the place where all good Democrats are, or are heading to, are worried. The concern is that Hillary could take a page from the book of one Joe Lieberman, once and former good Democrat, and decide that having lost out on his party's nomination to someone he couldn't see winning a general election, the better option (for him) was to run himself in the fall. Which he did. And won. Beating the liberal Democrat who had beaten him in the primary.

I don't believe it. But my friends in Obama-land, the place where all good Democrats are, or are heading to, are worried. The concern is that Hillary could take a page from the book of one Joe Lieberman, once and former good Democrat, and decide that having lost out on his party's nomination to someone he couldn't see winning a general election, the better option (for him) was to run himself in the fall. Which he did. And won. Beating the liberal Democrat who had beaten him in the primary. Of course, in Lieberman's case, it was his senate seat,...

A few years ago, the National Abortion Rights Action League, as it was then called, or NARAL for short, changed its name to NARAL Pro-Choice America. The idea, as I understood it, was to put the emphasis on "choice" rather than "abortion." This week, the organization announced its own choice in the Democratic primary contest, and as best as I can tell, it had absolutely nothing to do with preserving abortion rights and everything to do with their own sense of self-importance. Many women I know who have given generously of their time and efforts and money to the organization...

LOS ANGELES — There is good news and bad news for Democrats in the wake of Tuesday’s voting in West Virginia and Mississippi. The good news is that Democrats are now three-for-three in the contests for open House seats, adding Mississippi to the list where a Democrat, albeit one running as pro-life and pro-gun, defeated his Republican opponent in a traditionally Republican, conservative district. The bad news is that Barack Obama, who has been crowned by the media as the "presumptive nominee" of the Democratic Party, got trounced in a state that every Democrat to be elected president in recent...

LOS ANGELES — It is a thought that sends shivers down the backs of Democrats, a name that brings to mind memories of an election lost that might have been won, against a war hero once referred to in headlines as a “wimp” who won not so much by his own strengths but because of the skill of his operatives in painting his lesser-known opponent as an out of touch “liberal” who refused to salute the flag or admit his mistakes, not to mention his supposedly unpatriotic wife. Could Obama be another Dukakis? It isn’t just die-hard Clinton supporters who...

LOS ANGELES — McCain’s Men... While Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton continued to fight it out for the Democratic nomination on Tuesday, John McCain was waging a fight of his own within his party, for the support of the hard-core Republican base who aren’t quite sure they trust the man who discussed running with John Kerry in 2004 and reportedly told Arianna Huffington that he didn’t vote for George Bush in 2000. With attention focused elsewhere, it was a perfect day for McCain to appeal to the base he will be spending less time reassuring when the lights get hotter....

"At a political event, he goes out as a politician and says what he has to say as a politician," Reverend Jeremiah Wright told Bill Moyers in their well-publicized interview last week. "I continue to be a pastor. He's a politician. I'm a pastor." As my mother used to say, with friends like these.... If anyone thought that the Barack Obama campaign had any control over Reverend Jeremiah Wright, the controversial former pastor and "uncle figure" whose fiery speeches reeking of anti-Israel and anti-American sentiment provided at least a jolt to the Obama campaign, the pastor has proven conclusively in...

LOS ANGELES — Judging from my e-mail lately, quite a few people are angry at me, including some of my closest friends. All of them, I should note, are supporters of Barack Obama. They’re not angry at me for criticizing Obama, for insulting him in any way, which is something I try not to do; while I make no secret of my longstanding relationship and friendship with Hillary Clinton, and my belief that she would be an excellent President and that having a woman in the White House would itself be the sort of major change that I have always...

LOS ANGELES — I’ve been to this movie before. Act one: Hillary is way ahead. She’s supposed to win. Big. Then comes the Obama surge. That’s the beginning of Act Two. Instead of writing off the state, he plunges in headlong, spending time and money, collecting a few key endorsements, and great press. The polls start closing up, or at least that’s the way it gets played. Obama people start talking about not only finishing close, but actually winning, knocking Hillary out, how the whole thing could end, right here. In New Hampshire. In California, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Ohio or...

LOS ANGELES — I had to laugh last weekend watching New Mexico Governor and superdelegate Bill Richardson, who was everywhre endorsing Barack Obama, taking a moralistic stance on superdelegates respecting the will of the people. Come again. Which people? Would that be the people of his home state, who he will actually be “representing” at the convention, or the people of the 48 states that will be allowed to vote on the first Credentials Challenge, or the people of the 50 states who will be voting if Hillary ultimately has even one more vote than Obama on the question of...

I had to laugh last weekend watching New Mexico Governor and superdelegate Bill Richardson, who was everywhre endorsing Barack Obama, taking a moralistic stance on superdelegates respecting the will of the people. Would that be the people of his home state, who he will actually be “representing” at the convention, or the people of the 48 states that will be allowed to vote on the first Credentials Challenge, or the people of the 50 states who will be voting if Hillary ultimately has even one more vote than Obama on the question of seating Florida and Michigan? High-minded moral questions...

LOS ANGELES — I hate to say no to Neil Cavuto. I consider him a friend, a great host and a truly fine human being. ... But, even a pretzel can only twist around so much. And no matter how I twist it, there is just no way I can argue, with an even remotely straight face, that the Spitzer scandal helps the presidential candidate he endorsed, Hillary Clinton. The short answer is: it doesn’t. The only real question is how much it hurts. But you can’t look at Silda Wall Spitzer, standing by her man, at least behind the...

A Commentary by Susan Estrich A funny thing is about to happen to Barack Obama. No matter how much he thinks he's ready for it, he isn't. No matter how many people warn him, he'll be surprised. And hurt. And angry. His friends in the press are about to turn on him. They may not even know it yet, but they will. They can't help themselves. They've been caught fawning, made fun of for favoritism, become the subject of their own scrutiny. Which means they won't be able to resist. There's an old parable about a scorpion that asks a...

Susan Estrich either wants to build credibility as a satirist, or her latest column provides a long-overdue look in the mirror for Democrats. Detecting more a whiff of the so-called Bradley Effect in primaries where Barack Obama holds solid polling leads only to mysteriously fall short of Hillary Clinton, Estrich diagnoses a latent racism in her party. No kidding! But, the fact is that there is a long pattern of what we in California call the "Bradley problem" in polling, after the former Los Angeles mayor who was elected governor in every poll, including the exits, except that he lost...

LOS ANGELES — A funny thing keeps happening to Barack Obama on his way to victory against Hillary Clinton. It happened in New Hampshire. It happened again in Nevada. It happened last week in California, Massachusetts, New Jersey and even in New York. It’s not easy to figure out, but it deserves to be addressed.....[snip] But, the fact is that there is a long pattern of what we in California call the “Bradley problem” in polling, after the former Los Angeles mayor who was elected governor in every poll, including the exits, except that he lost at the ballot box....

I have to hand it to the Republicans. They might not want the hand, but they deserve it. If things continue the way they’ve gone, they’re on the verge of nominating the candidate many of them like least and many of my friends like most as their nominee for president... I’ve always liked John McCain. I’ve liked him because I think he’s smart and independent, and because his willingness to work with folks on the other side of the aisle to get things done reminded me of the way Washington used to function, in the good or bad old days,...

Susan Esterich & Greta Van Sustern are assuring us that Governor Mike Huckabee is “NOT the CANDIDATE that Republicans want. LOL!!!!!! Hillary Clinton congratulated Republicans for seeing the light" obviously to sow more dischord among us. Oh, thank you so much Susan for your genuinly altruistic advice. I am so glad that you Democrats want us to get the best candidate we can procure! I have no doubt that those who are already inebriated with the Ingraham, Coulter & Hannity Kool-Aid are credulous enough to believe that those DEMOCRATS are unselfishly looking out for the best interest of the REPUBLICAN...

LOS ANGELES — Censure? Driving home recently, I heard a story about Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s decision to support an administration proposal to provide absolute immunity from civil suit to telecommunications companies that cooperated with warrantless and illegal eavesdropping of their subscribers’ conversations. As a member of he Judiciary Committee, Feinstein’s support was obviously important, and I found myself shaking my head as I drove. Why grant immunity, I thought to myself, and why absolute immunity, without any regard to whether they knew or should have known that the requests being made of them were illegal? What kind of message would...

Think you've got problems? Consider the perils of Susan Estrich. Divorced, she has to eke out a living as a lawyer to support her two children. The demands of that job mean she doesn't get to see the kids as often as she likes. She is overweight and lacks the discipline to exercise regularly. Her house is a mess, and unethical rug cleaners wrecked her living-room floor. Wait, it gets worse. Her nanny lacks medical insurance because the application form is too confusing for Estrich to fill out. Estrich herself has health care, but complications from a recent surgical procedure...

LOS ANGELES — The other day, liberal talk radio host Randi Rhodes was reportedly out walking her dog when she fell and hit her head. She didn’t remember what happened, which led at least one of her colleagues, and countless bloggers, to speculate that she had literally been a victim of the Right-wing hit machine. Not so, as it turned out. No one hit her, Right wing or otherwise. She fell. The colleague who had ranted about the Right attacking her apologized and took it all back. End of story? Not quite. The next day, I appeared on Hannity and...

< >It is one crazy world when the man who rules Iran with an iron hand, denies the Holocaust, and vows to destroy Israel can speak at Columbia University, but the former president of Harvard and former Secretary of the Treasury can’t speak at U.C. Davis.< >I always thought we liberals were supposed to be in favor of free speech, open discussion, the marketplace of ideas, the notion that good ideas can defeat bad ones.< >It does us no good to forcibly silence those who say out loud what others believe in private.< >

How much did this transformation cost her? Yes, this really is the same person. Spewing Hate on the Internet, Anonymous, With No Accountability Sunday , August 12, 2007 By Susan Estrich Most mornings, my assistant goes through my e-mail before I do, culling out the ones that are simply vicious, vindictive and mean, so I don’t have to see them. Our rule is that threats get reported to the police, while mere ugliness just gets deleted. But once in a while, I get up early or she gets in late, and I make the mistake of clicking on messages I...

LOS ANGELES — Bill Clinton played peacemaker at the Democratic Leadership Council this week, ending the first spat between the party’s two frontrunners by noting that there are many ways to be diplomatic. That is not, of course, what Hillary’s team had suggested last week, when they described rival Barack Obama’s willingness to meet with the leaders of hostile nations as “naïve.” The question that had pundits chattering, given that everyone acknowledges that the former president doesn’t do anything accidentally, and that his political judgment is unparalleled, was why he decided to end the fight. Was it because it was...

It wasn’t so long ago that Terry Nelson and John Weaver, the two newly departed leaders of the McCain for President campaign, were widely considered to be political geniuses, whose presence in McCain-land was a sign of the then frontrunner’s strength. Nelson was a key player in past Bush efforts, who brought other Bush veterans with him; Weaver was one of those who helped McCain in his almost successful 2000 effort, widely described as McCain’s “Karl Rove.” Today, the two are widely written off as the “fools” who lead the frontrunner down the path of spending too much, mucking up...

Frankly, those are the only messages you get from her latest column. And what a shame, because she also illustrates how ridiculous the 'feminist establishment' truly has become while simultaneously reinforcing the stereotype that feminists are simply bitter and jealous: "Fred Thompson, would-be presidential candidate, is 64 years old and looks it. His wife, Jeri, is two years younger than one of his daughters and looks even younger than her 40 years. This term is generally used to refer to women who are substantially younger, less wrinkled, and sometimes, but not always, more accomplished than the old model. The old...

Fred Thompson's Trophy Wife Susan Estrich Friday, July 13, 2007 Fred Thompson, would-be presidential candidate, is 64 years old and looks it. His wife, Jeri, is two years younger than one of his daughters and looks even younger than her 40 years. They have had two babies together since they married in 2002. Does it matter? Imagine if Hillary Clinton were married to a 36-year-old stud. She'd be laughed out of town. Imagine, at 60, if she decided she wanted two more children. Too old, we'd all be screaming. So, does anyone care when Fred Thompson does it? There have...

Fred Thompson, would-be presidential candidate, is 64 years old and looks it. His wife, Jeri, is two years younger than one of his daughters and looks even younger than her 40 years. They have had two babies together since they married in 2002.Does it matter?

Once upon a time, not so long ago, there were two frontrunners in the race for the presidency. On the Democratic side, it was Hillary Rodham Clinton; "the rock star and the rest" was the title of one memorable National Journal assessment of the race. On the Republican side, it was John McCain. We Democrats were actually pretty worried about McCain. He was old, but he didn't seem it; what he seemed was experienced, independent, his own man, the one candidate in the Republican field who had the advantage of having gone through the process before. It seemed sufficiently inevitable...

All I can say is that it's a good thing it's Ken Burns. If the micromanagers and pseudo-censors representing the politically correct Congressional Hispanic Caucus were taking on a lesser filmmaker, who knows what would happen? At least it's relatively easy for PBS, the Public Broadcasting System, to stand behind the best documentary artist in America. In this climate, the second-best might not fare so well. The current controversy centers around Ken Burns' forthcoming film, "The War," which focuses on how the people of four American towns were affected by World War II. Famous historians everywhere have supported the project....

From the Worcester Country (MA) Telegram & Gazette: Two high-profile lawyers join Islamic charity caseOct 10, 2006First Amendment issues in case will be arguedBy Kevin Keenan TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFFWORCESTER— A pair of nationally recognized lawyers have been retained to argue First Amendment issues in a criminal case involving an Islamic charity and two of its officers who are charged with misrepresenting the charity’s work.Susan R. Estrich, a lawyer, author and media pundit, who managed Michael S. Dukakis’ 1988 presidential campaign, and Harvey A. Silverglate, a noted Cambridge criminal defense lawyer, entered appearances Thursday as counsel for Emadeddin Z. Muntasser...

Why Name-Calling Won't Hurt Hillary March 12, 2007 SUSAN ESTRICH Newt says she's nasty. Geffen says she's ambitious. The name-calling part of the presidential campaign is clearly in full swing. Next thing you know, someone will tell us she's not pretty enough to be president, and maybe that will be "news," too. After ambitious and nasty, could ugly be far behind? Is this really the best the Clinton critics can do? If Hillary Clinton were running for Miss Congeniality, she'd have reason to fear the latest rounds of criticism being lobbed at her and her campaign. "Miss United States" may...

The real crime here is the way the Bush administration manipulates the press and the press lets itself be manipulated, but there's no law against that. And no one is going to get punished for it. Poor Scooter. He just didn't understand that there really was no reason to lie. Sad is right.

The war is George Bush's Monica Lewinsky. It is his undoing — the public playing out of his fatal flaws, and the reason his second term will come to naught. It is the product of this president's arrogance and insecurity, as surely as an affair with an intern was the reflection of Bill Clinton's needs and denial. But unlike the last president's foolish affair, which he paid for dearly, we pay for this one. The difference between sex and war is the difference between a mistake even his wife can come to laugh about, and one that is an abiding...

his is not the way the system is supposed to operate. Prosecutors are supposed to be out for justice, not blood; committed to the truth, at all costs, not winning, without more. Prosecutors aren’t just morally obliged but legally required to turn over exculpatory evidence to the defense. Prosecutors aren’t just one side in a battle. You can’t come across the smoking gun covered with fingerprints on it – come across it because you have the power of the state to collect all the evidence – and then decide to ignore it because they don’t match the fingerprints of the...

“America wasn't truly ready for the first solo woman evening-news anchor, let alone someone smart and attractive with pretensions to sounding puckish and hip...” Does Katie Couric's Stumble Signal Hillary Clinton's Fall? You can tell me all the reasons it’s wrong, misguided, and unfair – that Katie is only one woman, what about Diane Sawyer, what about the quality of her show, thank you very much, or experience, and why should all women be judged by her, especially women, of whom there are more than a few, to judge by the ratings, who prefer their news from someone else, who...

Where Have All the Conservatives Gone? Right Runs Out of Potential PresidentsSunday , December 03, 2006By Susan Estrich Where have all the conservatives gone?Are there going to be any running for President?First it was Virginia’s George Allen, the great white hope, the George on a horse, the governor with a smile, on his way to a White House run, once he got past that frisky re-election campaign.He was, less than a short year ago, the Hotline’s unknown front-runner, the insider’s best guess, the neocon’s next new best friend.Now, thanks to a Macaca joke, a ham sandwich joke, a terrible campaign,...

White lies? Since when is it OK for a president to lie to reporters? Wasn’t it just last week that the president told reporters that both Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney were staying on their jobs for the next two years? It was an important question. The president didn’t duck. He didn’t give one of those mealy mouthed, we’ll see answers. He said yes, they’re both staying. And even as he said it, they were getting ready to get rid of Rumsfeld. He must have known that. He hadn’t talked to Gates yet, but Gates was being vetted for the...

Not only does this woman have a face like a mackerel, she has the intellect of a bar of soap. How original Susan! Now crawl back under your manhole cover.

She is the poster girl for the Right, perfectly decked out. Shiny blond hair. The ultimate façade. But facades are easy. I can put on a black dress. I can smile. I can make my hair look as long as hers. It proves nothing. What is important is what lies behind the façade. Will the real Ann Coulter please stand up? The real Ann Coulter is no beauty queen. It was her comments about the 9-11 widows that pushed me to investigate and to write my latest book. “I’ve never seen people enjoying their husbands’ deaths so much,” Coulter has...