That's only after Chait has warmed up by calling Clinton "a wildly polarizing figure;" saying that her "path to the nomination is pretty repulsive;" and contending that she has engaged in a "trial-by-smear method" against Obama.

What is Chait's evidence for all of this?  He mentions only that Clinton said (gasp) that John McCain might be more qualified to be president than Obama and that her response as to whether Obama is a Muslim was "oddly qualified." Wow, for that she is labeled as "repulsive" and "Nixonian," while Obama is inspiring, reform-minded, young.

Chait's piece, by the way, continues a theme of the magazine's editorial in the same issue that admonishes Clinton for the "relish not previously seen in this race" with which she has attacked Obama.  In other words, stop campaigning hard against him; you might hurt him and you're not going to win anyway.  Is this really helpful to Obama, to put him up on a pedestal, from which we know that, sooner or later, the media, and The New Republic, are going to knock him down?

The Obama love, by the way, continues in the current issue of the magazine, in a piece by Michelle Cottle, subtitled "Why Michelle Obama is no Hillary Clinton."  The love is transferred to Michelle, whom Cottle describes as "a hybrid model" of First Lady: "...a fresh, modern exterior wrapped around a fundamentally traditional core--which, for the purposes of her husband's campaign, seems to me the best of all possibilities."

Clinton, on the other hand, is described by Cottle as "a fierce symbol of feminism," and as more "alien" and less "sympathetic" than Michelle Obama.

Finally, in the same issue, Michael Crowley describes Barack Obama's "signature cool" in the face of attacks by McCain, and notes his "skill, so evident in the primaries, at shrugging off shots from his opponents."  He quotes an unnamed Senate Democratic aide as saying it reminded him of "'the way he has handled attcks from Hillary in the debates.'"

This is all in one issue of one magazine. There is no question for me that Clinton is swimming against a media tide.