Interesting Strategy
Stupid, but interesting. Hillary Clinton apparently believes that insulting voters who have chosen to back Barack Obama as unrealistic is a winning strategy. She said it was time for Democrats to "get real" in picking their candidate.
NEW YORK, Feb. 20 — Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton launched a tough new offensive against Sen. Barack Obama on Wednesday, asserting flatly that her rival for the Democratic presidential nomination is not prepared to serve as commander in chief.
"It is time to get real — to get real about how we actually win this election, and get real about the challenges facing America," the senator from New York told a cheering crowd at Hunter College in Manhattan.
Resounding Obama victories on Tuesday in Wisconsin and Hawaii pushed the senator from Illinois further ahead in the delegate count and have turned the Ohio and Texas primaries on March 4 into do-or-die battles for Clinton. After 10 straight defeats, she now trails Obama in overall delegates 1,351 to 1,262, according to an Associated Press tally, and faces a dwindling number of opportunities to slow her rival's pursuit of the 2,025 delegates needed to claim the party's nomination. The first chance will come Thursday night in Austin, where the two will debate.
Clinton's 17-percentage-point loss in Wisconsin was especially crushing, a sign that her criticisms of Obama — which were most intense during the Badger State showdown — did little to sway voters to her camp.
But instead of shifting course, Clinton redoubled her attempt to undermine his change-oriented message. "One of us is ready to be commander in chief," she told the crowd in New York. "Let's get real. Let's get real about this election, let's get real about our future, let's get real about what it is we can do together." Obama has had a "good couple of weeks," she allowed, but said his victories had come in states that he was expected to win. Clinton predicted that when voters in Ohio and Texas have the opportunity to take his measure, his run of success will end.
Obama waved off Clinton's latest broadside, declaring before a crowd of 17,000 gathered in Dallas on Wednesday afternoon: "Today, Senator Clinton told us there is a choice in this race, and I couldn't agree with her more. But contrary to what she was saying, it's not a choice between speeches and solutions. It's a choice between the politics of divisions and distractions that did not work in South Carolina, that did not work in Wisconsin and that will not work in Texas."
I have long said that Hillary Clinton has a tin ear and simply does not understand how her words will sound to voters. I think that is on display here. Insulting a huge chunk of the Democratic base is not going to unify the party. If she manages to pull out of the tailspin she is in and win the nomination, she would go into the general election with a serious handicap.
I no longer think that she will be going to the general election as the Democratic candidate, however, so the point is moot.
By Mockinbird, Thursday, 21 February , 2008 @ 4:17 pm
If Hillary loses like I think she will, she could still be Commander in Chef…at Arby’s.
They would let her bakecookies, too.