Remember when Senator Clinton was talking about the “commander in chief threshold” and how she and John McCain had crossed it but Barack Obama hadn’t?

Or when Bill Clinton, campaigning for his wife, was praising John McCain to the heavens —

Mr. Clinton said all three major candidates remaining in the race are talented and special people.

He did not go into detail on Sen. Barack Obama, the Illinois Senator still locked in political combat with Sen. Clinton’s wife for the Democratic nomination. Their next battle takes place next month in Pennsylvania.

But McCain, who Mr. Clinton said is a “moderate”, “has given about all you can give for this country without dyin’ for it.”

He said McCain was on the right side of issues like being against torture of enemy combatants and global warming, which “just about crosses the bridge for them (Republicans).”

That last bit took place all of three weeks ago, so I realize why it might have sunk into the memory hole. Still, I had remembered it, and also remembered that the Obama campaign might have grumbled a bit but didn’t make a Big Bleeping Deal out of it.

Yesterday, Senator Obama said this:

“You have a real choice in this election. Either Democrat would be better than John McCain,” Obama said to cheers from a rowdy crowd in central Pennsylvania. Then he said: “And all three of us would be better than George Bush.”

“But what you have to ask yourself is who has the chance to actually really change things in a fundamental way so that 10 years from now or 20 years from now you can look back and you can say boy we really moved in a new direction and we put the country on a better path,” Obama added as he wrapped up an event at Reading High School.

Obama was trying to argue that he is the better choice over Democratic rival Hillary Rodham Clinton in Tuesday’s primary in Pennsylvania. But the Illinois senator ended up mixing in praise for McCain at the same time.

The comment threatened to undercut Obama’s efforts — and those of the entire Democratic Party — to portray the GOP presidential nominee-in-waiting as nothing more than an extension of Bush’s unpopular tenure. At the very least, it provides fodder Republicans can use to prop up McCain.

Now, you and I could both argue that Obama shouldn’t have said that, although it used to be that candidates said complimentary things about their opponents on the stump, and this was considered gentlemanly, and no one took it seriously.

But today, Clinton supporters are going ballistic over what Obama said. The Clintons’ comments about what a strong leader McCain would be and how he is a moderate and not a wingnut Republican, however, were perfectly acceptable.

The mind, it is boggled.