Those of you complaining may not be old enough to remember this, but there was a time when a person's associates thought to provide insights into that person's character. I remember a time when a man named Ken Lay became a campaign issue.

That was way back in the election of aught-four. Things were different then; many people argued that lack of active-duty military service should practically disqualify a candidate, if you can believe such a thing, and Geraldine Ferraro, Joe Lieberman, and Bill Clinton were all widely respected within the Democratic party.

We've come a long way since then. The idea that a candidate should be grilled for views of other people in his church hasn't been commonplace in the Democratic party for tens of thousands of minutes, since Mitt Romney suspended his campaign."