The math just got even harder. Sen. Obama wins the Wyoming caucuses 61%-38%, meaning he’s picked up three more delegates on Clinton (7-5 + 1 add-on UAD), i.e. 75% of her ostensibly game-changing 4-delegate victory last Tuesday. Next stop, Mississippi on Tuesday.
It would be hard to say Mr. Obama has not been on the backfoot for most of the last week, wouldn’t you say? It has been disconcerting to see what had been such a tight, disciplined campaign stray off message so much. Shortly before Iowa, I asked a former close associate of the Clintons who he was voting for, and he said he was leaning toward Hillary just because there are certain perils in Washington that she will know how to sidestep better than Obama will because she’s been there. Certainly, all this “monster” nonsense is a sideshow that HRC is playing for maximum advantage, but the fact that Obama’s aides don’t know basic stuff like the nature of “off-the-record” does lend some sort of credence to the opponent’s argument that you want seasoned old pros in the White House. It’s unfortunate, but that’s bound to be the way the story looked to a lot of people.
What do you think is the best plan here? Take the battle to Clinton and attack her so-called strengths, in the same way they’ve been trying to undermine O’s selling points (rhetoric, integrity, record on NAFTA); or is it most important to preserve his pristine image above all? Is it possible for him to just run out the clock on her, with no serious expectation of winning PA?
I’d say he has and he hasn’t. If you turn down the volume on what’s gone on this week and focus on the numbers, Obama’s actually extended his pledged delegate lead on Clinton since last weekend, and picked up more supers as well. So the Clinton campaign can wail and gnash their teeth as much as they want, but the fact remains that they’ve basically already lost this thing.
With that in mind, I don’t think Obama needs to change much, to be honest. Sure, he should be pointed in his responses, while letting Plouffe, Burton, et al press the real attack. But I really don’t think he needs to try to out-Clinton Clinton. As the saying goes, don’t get into a wrestling match with a pig. You just get dirty and the pig loves it.
That being said, I would send Kerry, Kennedy, or someone equivalently high profile to push back on the recent Clinton stumping for McCain. That’s the type of thing that will get undecided Dems off the fence, I’d wager.
Regarding Power and “off the record,” she just got screwed by the British press. As the TNR guys noted, Power was following the general rule over here on our side of the pond. (Glenn Greenwald at Salon has a piece on this today, defending The Scotsman as more of what our press should be doing.)
He also picked up another likely superdelegate tonight with Foster’s win in Hastert’s(!) old seat. That one bodes incredibly well for the House in the fall, as the NRCC put a lot into that, in a reliably red district, and it wasn’t even very close.
Also, he won running on a strongly anti-war and anti-telecom-immunity message. Wake up, Democratic Congress, these are fairly strong majority views now.