Well, there's negative and then there's negative. As negative as Clinton may go, she is not going to start calling Obama a muslim terrorist sleeper agent (the Republicans, however, will). As negative as Obama may go, he is not going to start talking about how Clinton murders her former lovers (the Republicans, however, will).

I mean, for all the wailing and gnashing of teeth about the 3 a.m. ad, it was negative but it wasn't THAT negative. Have we all so quickly forgotten that 4 years ago the Republican VP candidate was telling people that if they voted Democratic that the country was going to be attacked by terrorists?

I don't think that a drawn out process is necessarily a negative, if only because, yeah, our candidates may get a little tarnished, but the longer this goes on, the more defined our eventual candidate, be it Hillary or Barry, will be...on Democratic terms. If this process allows us to define our candidates, then that is far better than having our candidate introduced to the people via the Republican noise machine. If there is a little bloom off the tested experiencestress or hopethirsty changemonger rose, I don't think that's a big deal...