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Opinion: Hillary Clinton erases Eliot Spitzer in a New York minute*

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This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.

*(UPDATE: We messed up. This headline is wrong because the related passage far below is wrong. That cites Radar Online as saying that the Clinton campaign website removed a Spitzer endorsement from its endorsement page. A Clinton spokesman sends word that the Spitzer endorsement was never posted on the official endorsement page but appeared elsewhere. The Radar site has also posted a correction and its editor sent an apology to The Ticket for providing incorrect information. We should have checked with the Clinton campaign before using it here.)

Maybe you heard a little something Monday about some tall guy in the East with a jaw like Gibraltar who apologized to his family and the public for disappointing himself. And allegedly it has something to do with sex and there was his poor wife standing next to him looking as lost as that New Jersey governor’s wife a couple of years ago.

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Spitzer, that was the name. Eliot. Governor of New York. At least at this writing. And the word in all the media was the feds have him on tape tied to a prostitution ring that must have the most beautiful women in the world to charge $5,500 for we can only guess what. But it can’t be good if the feds are taping it.

Some people will criticize the media for always going after Republicans in sex scandals because of their hypocritical stance on morality. Trouble is, Spitzer’s a Democrat. So you won’t hear John McCain complaining this week. Another....

ortrouble is that it looks like Spitzer is a hypocritical Democrat because, as state attorney general, he went after prostitution rings and the media publicity attached thereto.

There’s a political problem, too -- or three -- for Hillary Clinton. Spitzer endorsed her for the Democratic presidential nomination. And so, as it happens, did Gavin Newsom, the mayor of San Francisco, who publicly apologized last year for conducting an illicit affair with the wife of one of his top aides.

And then there was this local L.A. fellow, Antonio Villaraigosa, another mayor, who also announced his endorsement of Clinton last year and then soon after also announced his impending divorce due to a long-running love affair with a local TV anchorwoman.

So you might understand the New York senator’s sensitivity over Eliot ‘Let’s give driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants’ Spitzer. While all the media hoo-hah was going on Monday, and the number of visitors to websites with Spitzer stories absolutely rocketed off the charts, the alert folks over at Radar Online cleverly went to Clinton’s campaign website and put a clock on the endorsement page.

Their timing showed that faster than you can say ‘Mitt Romney dumps Larry Craig,’ the Spitzer endorsement on the Clinton website disappeared. Vanished. Gone. Poof. Like he never happened to her last May. There’s Melanie Griffith, John Cook and Norm Dicks. But no more Eliot Spitzer.

(UPDATE: A Clinton campaign spokesman sends word that the Spitzer endorsement has not been on the official endorsement page but is mentioned in three other places on the campaign website.)

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It took Romney nearly a day to erase the toe-tapping Craig last August. It took Clinton less than an hour. That’s the long experience of the Clinton machine at work.

But chances are you won’t hear the New York senator say anything other than sympathy for the family and ‘I’m not going to comment on an ongoing legal case.’ The reason may be sensitivity for Spitzer, now in seclusion.

Or it could also have something to do with Spitzer being a super-delegate, one of those cherished high-falutin’ unelected convention votes that may well decide who gets the Democratic nomination for president. At the moment he is pledged to Clinton.

And no one named Clinton is throwing any of those under the bus these days.

--Andrew Malcolm

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