Monday, February 18, 2008

Hillary: Tough, Experienced, Ready on Day One

Hillary, whom I'm doing my best not to despise as this election goes along, has employed a couple of unforgiveable tactics: she's trying to game the delegate system even if she loses, and she's giving the GOP lots of talking points about how to attack Obama if he does become the nominee.
And it's the second one that's turned my Monday morning sour.

At an RNC donor event over the weekend, Republicans outlined their plan of attack against Obama--and it's essentially taken directly from Hillary's playbook:
The first called for pointing out what the GOP views as a seeming incongruity between Obama and the mantle of commander in chief. The second point harkened back to Obama’s days in the Illinois state Senate, noting how his “pattern of voting ‘present’ offers many openings to question his candidacy.” The third offered hope to the GOP faithful that “we can be confident in a campaign about issues.” A fourth bullet point relayed how “undisciplined messaging carries great risk,” while the fifth and final attack point stressed, “His greatest weakness is inexperience. He is not ready to be commander in chief. He is not ready to be president.”
Sound familiar? The worst part of this isn't that they'll attack Obama directly with these--they'll quote Hillary in making them. You'll see ads with her making these points and hear surrogates and the campaign quoting her--an entire effort led by Hillary Clinton.

Hillary, of course, offers solid day-one readiness and vast experience to run the ship of state. Oh really? This is the woman who ran her campaign so badly that her manager lied to her about how little money she had, who adopted a strategy of "inevitability" that gave Obama a talking point after winning Iowa that has turned him into the front-runner, who ignored caucuses because she didn't think the pissant delegates from Idaho mattered, and who staked her entire strategy on knocking Obama out on Super Tuesday. And now there's this:

While the Hillary Clinton campaign has made the Ohio and Texas contests on March 4 into their new firewall, they have only recently discovered the arcane rules of delegate selection in Texas, which could potentially mean that even a substantial popular win translates into only a slight edge in delegates.

The Washington Post reports that Hillary strategists learned in a closed-door meeting this month about the Texas contest, which splits delegates among the state Senate districts and also between the primary and a caucus held that night. It's ultimately a commentary on their lack of planning for a race lasting after Super Tuesday — when they thought they'd have the race locked up — that they have only just now learned of delegate rules that were of long-standing public knowledge.

Ready on day one my ass.

2 comments:

Sisters in Circle: Women's Reconnection Program said...

If this is the best the Republicans can come up with (and I do not believe it is) then all looks very good. After all, this logic has failed to garner votes for Hillary.

Sisters in Circle: Women's Reconnection Program said...

It seems that after Super Tuesday the Clinton machine really gave up on the popular vote this primary. They seemed to revert to 'screw the people' elitist thinking and just wine and dine the superdelegates. How does this get busted up? Obama will win the popular vote. Even if he doesn't win by much, how do we get him into office? I am very concerned for the 'race' in August.