Fighting "The Big Mo"
Some doubts are rising in the minds of supposedly committed Clinton super-delegates. As Joe Trippi pointed out last week, “its hard to be the 800 pound gorilla when you’re broke”. The new pitch to panicked Clinton supporters is much like the Guiliani pitch of last month.
The Clinton team moved on Monday to shift the spotlight off the candidate’s short-term challenges and focus instead on “the long run,” in the words of her senior strategist, Mark Penn.
“She has consistently shown an electoral resiliency in difficult situations that have made her a winner,” Mr. Penn said. “Senator Obama has in fact never had a serious Republican challenger.”
Excuse me, but when has Senator Clinton ever “had a serious Republican challenger”?
UPDATE: Josh Marshall says even Rudy’s campaign manager thinks Clinton is running a Rudy Strategy
I’m enjoying Slate’s take on how Clinton should cope:
“The best news for Hillary Clinton’s campaign may be that it’s headed over a cliff. In a campaign season where conventional wisdom has been so wrong so often, she can take heart that the current view among the political class is that Obama is marching unstoppably toward the nomination.”
(via http://www.slate.com/id/2184207/)
Also, Jon, I’ve been watching your tag cloud and the site’s bias is starting to show: my how big Obama has grown!
Pete- I’ve not tried to hide my enthusiasm for Barack.
“Excuse me, but when has Senator Clinton ever ‘had a serious Republican challenger’?”
This is thing that puzzles me most about this campaign: all of the criticism leveled at Obama’s “lack of experience.” Am I mistaken, or is Clinton’s supposed extra “experience” based on her time spent as the First Lady? Because being First Lady gives one experience as a First Lady, it does NOT give one experience as being the leader of a country. It’s like saying that one has experience being a doctor because one is married to a doctor. What kind of logic is that?! It seems that as much as Hillary tries to differentiate herself from her husband, she continues to rely on the notion that she and Bill are a single unit: his experience becomes her experience. He’s had serious Republican challengers, therefore she has had serious Republican challengers…and so on.
Anyway, perhaps I really am mistaken here. And if so, could someone PLEASE enlighten me as to where I’ve gone wrong? This issue has been driving me crazy, and it would be nice to finally have it put to rest…or validated.
Melissa- Unfortunately, you are not mistaken. I’m sure their some co-dependency here.