Posted by Damozel | The zeitgeist my friend, is blowing in the wind. Those in the know or 'know' think that Dems in general are becoming fed up with the Duelling Dems. At Swampland, Joe Klein writes:
I woke up this morning with a gut feeling that the Philadelphia debate may have been the last straw for the Democratic Party, that the superdelegates are about to rush to Barack Obama in order to end this thing and liberate him to actually answer the Republican-style attacks that Hillary Clinton has been previewing.... [Swampland; emphasis added]
This new cant about Clinton's 'Republican-style attacks' is, of course, arrant nonsense. The Left Coaster did a bang-up job of showing why. Any attack by either candidate going to the other's honesty, trustworthiness, or credibility is a 'Republican-style attack' and The Left Coaster has carefully chronicled similar attacks by Obama's crowd (who clearly started earlier and went after Clinton oftener). But never mind accuracy: it's all in how Obama and the media frame it.
And they don't like it when the media goes for Obama. As always, it's Hillary's fault. Never mind whether the 'Republican-style atttacks' that Hillary Clinton has been 'previewing' are substantively accurate. 'Republican-style attacks' on Hillary are standard operating procedure! Nobody minds when Obama launches 'Republican-style attacks' on her. It's those Clinton rules again. It's always Republican-style tactics when she calls out Obama, even if she just points out the obvious.
[T]he Clinton campaign made a huge tactical error in jumping on the "bitter" comments themselves, rather than simply letting the media push them. If Obama had just been answering to the media, it would have been a problem. But when Clinton jumped in, he started being able to answer more attacks from Hillary Clinton, leading to videos like this one, and letting the media stop reporting on the bitter comments and start reporting on a new spat between Clinton and Obama. That's the sort of thing voters instinctively tune out. Worse, it created second-day news stories where Obama could counterattack on Clinton. If anything in this whole spat will be meaningful to the superdelegates, my hunch is that it'll be Clinton's apparent inability to play a stunningly good political hand. (Ezra Klein)
What can I say? He's not wrong. Not that it's Hillary's fault exactly that she can only win if she doesn't play her hand at all. But she can also only win if she does.
Meanwhile, the Dems want to get the fight against McCain to get under way NOW, even though the average voter (the voters who don't hang out on the internets) is barely paying attention yet, and isn't planning to pay attention till, say, August.
And now the McCain campaign, Republican-style, is denouncing Obama's 'Republican-style attacks' on McCain! This is what's being presented as going 'into general election mode,' as opposed to responding to a direct attack based on Obama's trademark method of getting facts just very slightly out of context.
The McCain campaign has long argued Obama has a habit of twisting the presumptive Republican nominee's words. Referencing McCain's comments earlier this year when he said he'd be okay with some troop presence in Iraq for 100 years, Obama has said the Arizona senator "wants to continue a war in Iraq perhaps as long as 100 years."
The non-partisan factcheck.org later called that characterization a "rank falsehood."
Obama has since dialed back from that characterization, saying Friday that McCain is "willing to potentially maintain the troop presence there for as long as 100 years." (CNN)
I don't like Obama and I don't want him to be the nominee, but perhaps the spectacle of having Republican tactics used against a Republican is just too alluring to those of my fellow Dems who have decided that it's time to hand the crown to Obama. He's made from Teflon! He can twist the facts,
Rove-style, all he likes and whatever he says sticks like glue to his opponent!
Just don't bother asking Hillary's supporters, especially disenfranchised Floridians, to Move On.
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