Candidates: Stick Up For One Another!!!!

I might have missed something. But, anyhow, if this hasn't happened yet: all of the major Democratic presidential candidates ought to get together and declare to one another that, if people like Coulter or the Swift Boaters truly slime any of them, they are all slimed, and that they mutually will unite to denounce the sliming. They ought to start by issuing a joint statement expressing concern about Ann Coulter's "joke" about wanting John Edwards to be assassinated.

Really, if a well-known liberal columnist were ever to write such a terrible thing about Giuliani or Romney, the Democratic candidates ought to put out a joint statement denouncing that, too.

The Democratic candidates have nothing to lose by uniting against hate speech and Swift Boating and everything to gain.

I think Democrats have tended to lie low in situations such as this because they want to respect freedom of expression, they don't want to give wingnuts extra publicity by turning the wingnuts into free speech martyrs, and they don't really want to attract the attention of the Coulters of the world.

But I think the secret here is that, if the Democratic primary candidates all join together to denounce major incidents of political hate speech and Swift Boating, they will improve their own image and the image of the Democratic Party as a whole.

Note: I'm not talking about calls for any form of censorship. I'm just saying the candidates should respond to wingnut hate speech with speech of their own.

If Edwards, Obama, Hillary Clinton, et al. unite to speak out against this sort of thing:

• They will have safety in numbers. (Certainly, the Bush Rovie/RightMarch.com slimers can mock them collectively, but jeering of several Democrats simultaneously just won't work as well as jeering of one.)
• They will be dealing with an important civic problem.
• They will look like strong, statesmanlike/womanlike people who can work together with opponents as well as with supporters.
• They will help the target of any personal attacks look more noble, by reducing the pressure on the targets to personally parry the attacks.
• The ones who are protecting the targeted candidate will end up looking brave and valiant.

Example: it's great that Elizabeth Edwards is speaking up to defend her husband, but I want to see Obama, Hillary Clinton, Kucinich, etc. all joining to back her up on this issue.

I would love to see them all get together to appear in some national TV commercial that, in a dignified way, would somehow make them look like members of the Justice League, and have them say that, in this age of terrorism and political divisiveness, it's wrong and bad for the country to get up on TV and joke about people being assassinated just because you disagree with their policies.