Commentary: Drug rumors about Obama playing on stereotypes?

SAN DIEGO, California (CNN) -- Ever since Barack Obama began to pierce the inevitability that we were told surrounded the presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton, I've wondered how the Clintonistas would react. Now we know: not well.

For one thing, as we learned in the 1990s, the Clintons don't like to be challenged. And when they are, they don't just try to beat you. They set out to destroy you.

Which makes recent events even more poetic. The harder Team Clinton tries to destroy Obama, the more damage they wind up doing -- to Hillary and her campaign. Just when you thought that the former first lady couldn't come across any more unlikable, desperate, and vindictive, the floor collapses and we find ourselves on a new level.

Last week, Billy Shaheen, Clinton's co-chairman in New Hampshire, resigned from the campaign after floating the rumor that Obama, in his youth, may have been not just a drug user but a drug dealer. Shaheen speculated to a Washington Post reporter that Obama's past could make him unelectable if the Illinois senator wins the nomination and those dastardly Republicans, who are famous for their dirty tricks, decide to make an issue of Obama's admitted past drug use. Shaheen suggested that Republicans might want to know if Obama, in addition to using drugs, ever sold them?

more:

http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/12/17/navarrette/index.html

I have a difficult time taking a commentary seriously that uses Clintonistas in the first sentence.