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Politics is their vocation, their hobby and their toy. It doesn't matter what happens as long as it entertains them. Think of the popular clique in high school; the people who could make others' lives as fun or (more likely) as miserable as they wanted. Some kid could be reduced to a sniveling, sobbing heap, and the only reaction from the popular crowd would be high fives about his humiliation.
The same goes for the professional punditry. The real world results of what happens are far less important (if thought about at all) than whether or not they had a good time. Check out Bob Somerby's The Daily Howler; the reporters dismantled Al Gore and dwelled on such trivia as earth tones and living at the Mayfair Hotel not because it mattered in any real world sense, but because it was fun to do. Endlessly carping about whether Gore went to a hurricane site with the Director or Deputy Director of some federal alphabet agency was more important (as measured by how much time was spent reporting) than the consequences to actual voters of the various policy proposals.
As long as the pundits are entertained, they don't give a rip about policy or all that wonky stuff. Whether Obama has the opportunity to rip on another candidate is less important than that he does rip on another candidate, fairly or unfairly. The pundits, of course, reserve solely to themselves the role of detemining "fairness," but they have to have the show first. For Obama to pass on a chance to rip Clinton deprives them of the spectacle, and therefore they will, in their inscrutable wisdom, blame both Obama for not taking the cheap shot and Clinton for not receiving the cheap shot.
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