One more note in the “what’s the big deal” discussion: Several readers reminded me of an obvious reason to discuss the story of Obama and his allies getting petition signatures disqualified because they were printed instead of in cursive: there are still Americans who still believe that Obama is, as he put it in his speech announcing his campaign, the standard-bearer for “a new kind of politics.”

Getting all of your primary opponents disqualified because their petition-collecting volunteers were unaware of an obscure incumbent-protecting technicality about penmanship cannot be, under any definition, “a new kind of politics.”

In that first speech, Obama denounced “the smallness of our politics – the ease with which we’re distracted by the petty and trivial, our chronic avoidance of tough decisions, our preference for scoring cheap political points instead of rolling up our sleeves and building a working consensus to tackle big problems.” Well, does Obama’s ousted rival Alice Palmer think that Obama really does rise above small politics, the petty and the trivial, and scoring cheap political points?

Her efforts on behalf of Hillary Clinton would appear to suggest “no.”

UPDATE: My reader Jason figures out how to explain the issue in one sentence: “Oh, sure, then Obama was a “strict constructionist,” when his election was on the line…”