Sorry, I can't pretend to be neutral after this garbage:

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, in a wide-ranging interview today with Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reporters and editors, said she would have left her church if her pastor made the sort of inflammatory remarks Sen. Barack Obama’s former pastor made.

“He would not have been my pastor,” Clinton said. “You don’t choose your family, but you choose what church you want to attend.” …

The Clinton campaign has refrained from getting involved in the controversy, but Clinton herself, responding to a question, denounced what she said was “hate speech.”

“You know, I spoke out against Don Imus, saying that hate speech was unacceptable in any setting, and I believe that,” Clinton said. “I just think you have to speak out against that. You certainly have to do that, if not explicitly, then implicitly by getting up and moving.”

How screwed up is this? It's so screwed up that, as Steve Benen points out, both John McCain and Mike Huckabee have defended Obama while Hillary goes after him. And per Booman, she's got some nerve, considering her own connections.

I'm with Booman: this is not the lowest of the low roads, but it has the potential to open the door to all kinds of destructive racial narratives. That takes beyond the fate of the Democratic party to the health of our society itself.

For the good of the party and the nation, Democratic leaders, including Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and Howard Dean, need to call this contest over. Scorched earth is not an acceptable political strategy.