Unclogging the Kitchen Sink
Submitted by Howie on Thu, 03/13/2008 - 19:33
Over at ConsortiumNews.com Robert Parry compares the Clinton so-called "kitchen sink" strategy to that of Bush Republicans who "routinely turn truth inside out" in Clinton's Up-Is-Down World.
LA Weekly's Marc Cooper echoes Parry's analysis, describing how Hillary Clinton Wins, Republican Style.
At The New Republic, Jonathan Chait analyzes Clinton strategist Mark Penn's comment today that Obama "really can't win the general [election]." Calling that statement "silly," Chait parses it to mean that the Clinton campaign's only hope between now and the Democratic convention is to try to make Obama unelectable.
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More on electability
Ryan Lizza writes in the New Yorker
This electability argument—that Obama can be easily caricatured, that he’s weak on national security, that he’s too liberal—is not so very different from the Republican case against Obama, although the charges might be more damaging coming from a member of one’s own party, especially in a bruising campaign that may last until the Convention this August in Denver. It is tempting to say that the Clinton campaign’s plan is to burn the village in order to save it—that Hillary Clinton believes that Democrats, hypnotized by Obama, are making a historic mistake from which only she can rescue them. And it is tempting to add that this means the political destruction of the man who is still most likely to be the Democratic nominee.
Sadly, in my view, Lizza buys the argument that the negative tactics are "toughening up" Obama. The problem with that is that negative campaign tactics hurt the attacker and the target; they're a gamble that the target will be hurt more. By that measure, Clinton's tactics may have succeeded. Looking just at Rasmussen polls, in February Obama led McCain by 3 points; now he leads by one. The same polls show McCain's 2-point lead over Clinton is unchanged over the same period.