Hardly. Just wait till the General Election if Obama is the nominee.

I just heard about this the other day while reading Bloomberg.com in the context of how the Republican attack machine will use this against Obama. This is very damaging. The fact that Obama is associated with a domestic terrorist is (let me list a litany of why this is bad news for Democrats):

• Shows Obama's terrible judgment


• Hello, Ayers is an admitted terrorists!


• RNC will swiftboat Obama as, at the very least, a terrorist sympathizer


• Hello, global terrorism!


• Will terrorist be sleeping in the Lincoln bedroom?


• Hello, what else don't we know about Obama?

Dear MSM, please vet Obama before the Democratic party shoots itself in the foot (again).

Factcheck from the Washington Post:

There has been a sudden spate of blog items and newspaper articles, mainly in the British press, linking Barack Obama to a former member of the radical Weather Underground Organization that claimed responsibility for a dozen bombings between 1970 and 1974. The former Weatherman, William Ayers, now holds the position of distinguished professor of education at the University of Illinois-Chicago. Although never convicted of any crime, he told the New York Times in September 2001, "I don't regret setting bombs...I feel we didn't do enough."

Both Obama and Ayers were members of the board of an anti-poverty group, the Woods Fund of Chicago, between 1999 and 2002. In addition, Ayers contributed $200 to Obama's re-election fund to the Illinois State Senate in April 2001, as reported here. They lived within a few blocks of each other in the trendy Hyde Park section of Chicago, and moved in the same liberal-progressive circles.

Is there anything here that raises questions about Obama's judgment or is this just another example of guilt by association?

The Facts
The first article in the mainstream press linking Obama to Ayers appeared in the London Daily Mail on February 2. It was written by Peter Hitchens, the right-wing brother of the left-wing firebrand turned Iraq war supporter, Christopher Hitchens. Hitchens cited the Ayers connection to bolster his argument that Obama is "far more radical than he would like us to know."

The Hitchens piece was followed by a Bloomberg article last week pointing to the Ayers connection as support for Hillary Clinton's contention that Obama might not be able to withstand the "Republican attack machine." Larry Johnson, a former counterterrorism official at the CIA and the State Department, predicted that the Republicans would seize on the Ayers case, and other Chicago relationships, to "bludgeon Obama's presidential aspirations into the dust."

The London Sunday Times joined the chorus this weekend by reporting that Republicans were "out to crush Barack by painting him as a leftwinger with dubious support".

The only hard facts that have come out so far are the $200 contribution by Ayers to the Obama re-election fund, and their joint membership of the eight-person Woods Fund Board. Ayers did not respond to e-mails and telephone calls requesting clarification of the relationship. Obama spokesman Bill Burton noted in a statement that Ayers was a professor of education at the University of Illinois and a former aide to Mayor Richard M. Daley, and continued:

Senator Obama strongly condemns the violent actions of the Weathermen group, as he does all acts of violence. But he was an eight-year-old child when Ayers and the Weathermen were active, and any attempt to connect Obama with events of almost forty years ago is ridiculous.
In the short term, the person who has most to gain by speculation about Obama's acquaintance with a former terrorist is Hillary Clinton. The former First Lady likes to present herself as "tested and vetted" after years of exposure to Republican attacks, in contrast to Obama, a relative newcomer to hardscrabble presidential politics. Such arguments resonate with Johnson, the counterterrorism expert, who told me that he is a Clinton supporter, although not involved with the campaign.

But the Obama-Ayers link is a tenuous one. As Newsday pointed out, Clinton has her own, also tenuous, Weatherman connection. Her husband commuted the sentences of a couple of convicted Weather Underground members, Susan Rosenberg and Linda Sue Evans, shortly before leaving office in January 2001. Which is worse: pardoning a convicted terrorist or accepting a campaign contribution from a former Weatherman who was never convicted?

Whatever his past, Ayers is now a respected member of the Chicago intelligentsia, and still a member of the Woods Fund Board. The president of the Woods Fund, Deborah Harrington, said he had been selected for the board because of his solid academic credentials and "passion for social justice."

"This whole connection is a stretch," Harrington told me. "Barack was very well known in Chicago, and a highly respected legislator. It would be difficult to find people round here who never volunteered or contributed money to one of his campaigns."

You Clintonistas are fucking garbage, talk about spewing right wing talking points:

Facts don't matter anymore, eh?

this site.  That last post should probably be pulled for its vulgar end.

Hmmmm
Does the HRC trusting Bush on Iraq mean anything...to anybody?
Or is the Surge working?

http://icasualties.org/oif/

I have been trying really...really hard to live with the Clinton Ok no remorse on Iraq..
That will not keep me from CD this March anniversary.
What are YOU prepared to do to stand up other than your support for any candidate?
Didn't fuckin' think so..
How can anyone demand more of their candidate than we are willing to do ourselves?
but hey I understand how a misdemeanor arrest in the face of Cheney/Bush might jeopardize a career..
All about priorities...right/  
But please..if you are not willing to put your ass on the the line..refrain from asking Obama or Clinton to put their ass on the line for you...
(or complaining when they don't)