Hillary - See yourself as others see you

[Krashkopf]

This Clinton "fear-mongering" "kitchen sink" campaign is VERY VERY UGLY.

If Obama wins the nomination - but loses the General Election to McCain - I WILL blame Hillary Clinton. In my mind, she will become a "Ralph Nader-like" pariah within the Democratic party.

Here is a view of Clinton through Aussie eyes:

Clinton attacks on Obama may boost McCain
Sarah Baxter/March 10, 2008/The Australian

FRESH from her victories in three out of four states last week and surging back in the national polls, Hillary Clinton has crafted a new strategy for winning the Democratic nomination that she believes will legitimise her claim to be president.

Clinton thinks she can win a majority of the popular vote in primaries and caucuses, even if she cannot overtake Barack Obama, her rival, in the number of "pledged" delegates who will vote to choose the candidate at the Democratic national convention in August.

The New York senator has unnerved Obama, who has been left reeling by a series of errors from senior policy advisers. The two opponents face an ugly six-week battle in the run-up to a potentially pivotal primary in Pennsylvania next month.

Former senator Bill Bradley, a leading supporter of Obama and who ran for president in 2000, accused the Clintons of "lying" in pursuit of victory. "The bigger the lie, the better the chance they think they've got. That's been their whole approach," he said. "She's going to lose a whole generation of people who got involved in politics believing it could be something different."

Bradley believes Clinton will stop at nothing to tear down Obama even if it boosts John McCain, who was confirmed last week as the Republican nominee: "The Clintons do not do long-term planning. They're total tacticians and right now their focus is on Obama, not McCain."

Obama, 46, is threatened by a pincer movement from Clinton, 60, and McCain, 71, as they try to halt his progress with similar arguments about his lack of national security and foreign policy expertise. An Obama insider admitted: "Whenever there's one person versus two, it always makes things more difficult."

Clinton's big win in Ohio has convinced her that she can repeat her success next month among white working-class voters in Pennsylvania, another populous swing state. It could put her on course to overtake Obama in the total number of votes cast, giving moral legitimacy to her claim that super delegates - the 796 party leaders, governors and congressmen expected to hold a casting vote - should back her.

A senior Clinton official said: "The momentum is shifting to us right now. If we are the leader in the popular vote and we have closed the gap in pledged delegates, that's a very persuasive argument."

The argument is being made privately as winning the most votes still presents a formidable challenge. She might, in the end, have to rest her case on her ability to win key battleground states.

Clinton's team is divided by backbiting over how to confront the difficulties ahead.

However, the new strategy explains why Clinton is prepared to mount an assault on Obama that risks handing victory to McCain. It is worth badly wounding her rival as she believes she has found a way to win. "If she wins big in Pennsylvania, she can rack up a majority of several hundred thousand votes and be in hailing distance of Obama. So stay tuned," said Brookings Insitution election expert William Galston, who is backing Clinton.

Clinton's new tactics depend on clearing up a mess in Florida and Michigan, which are banned from seating delegates at the convention because they defied party rules by holding early primary contests.

Obama leads Clinton by nearly 600,000 in the number of votes cast to date, but trails her by 30,000 if the votes of the two "rogue" states are counted. These states are now likely to stage some form of rerun.

Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House of Representatives who will play a critical role in the event of a near-tie at the convention, met leading Clinton officials last week to discuss Florida and Michigan "do-overs", the role of super delegates and the campaign's increasingly vitriolic tone.

Tad Devine, a senior Democratic strategist who has overseen bitter convention battles, said Obama was still the favourite. "He has a 50-state strategy and she has a 15-state strategy and in the end that may be decisive," he said. "The most important factor for the super delegates will be who has the most pledged delegates."

Clinton will need improbably large victories in the remaining contests to narrow the 100-plus delegate gap that Obama has established. His lead is likely to grow after Mississippi votes on Tuesday (local time).

The former first lady is pummelling Obama hard in the expectation that he will abandon his signature politics of "hope" for a dirty fight. Her team has accused Obama of behaving like Kenneth Starr, the chief inquisitor of the Clintons over the Whitewater affair in the 1990s, for demanding she make her tax returns public.

The explosive subject of race is not far from the surface. The internet is buzzing with claims Clinton's team made Obama's face look blacker on a recent TV advertisement challenging his foreign policy credentials. Clinton mucked in by denying rumours Obama was a Muslim - before adding, "as far as I know".

Obama cannot publicly blame racism for his slowing momentum, but his team has little doubt in private that it was a factor in Ohio last week. "He has to take a good hard look at why he failed to connect with so many working-class voters," said Galston.

Closing the gap with working-class voters is essential to persuading super delegates that Obama is capable of going head-to-head with McCain.

McCain, meanwile, has produced an ad comparing himself with Winston Churchill. Just as Britain's wartime leader vowed to "fight them on the beaches" so McCain, accompanied by grainy film of him in pain as a young prisoner of the North Vietnamese, promises: "We shall never surrender. They will."

The clip emphasises his patriotism. Karl Rove, former adviser to President George W. Bush, observed in The Wall Street Journal: "The interesting intellectual phenomenon is the emergence of the 'McCainocrats' - Democrats backing McCain ... In three recent polls, almost twice as many Democrats support Mr McCain as Republicans support Mr Obama."

An adviser to Obama admitted his candidate was running into opposition from the kind of blue-collar workers who once supported Ronald Reagan, the Republican president: "Right now, Barack is not connecting with the children of the Reagan Democrats. That's a real concern."

The question for Clinton is whether the white working-class voters will desert her for McCain in the general election, even if she is now basking in their support.

Some cynics believe she is willing to undermine Obama sufficiently for him to lose to McCain in November, freeing her to take another shot at office in 2012.

The Sunday Times

[blue52power]

1. Obama is showing weakness

"If Obama wins the nomination - but loses the General Election to McCain - I WILL blame Hillary Clinton."

If Obama loses it is on hiw own merits. Hillary is a far stronger candidate in the big states.
The SuperDelegates should just switch to Hillary right now and spare us the battle at the convention.

[Krashkopf]

2. Clinton is marginally stronger among Democrats is some larger states . . .

although the people in the LARGE state of Virginia might disagree . . . and her poll number trends over time in all of the big states where she eeked out victories was way down, not up . . .

but, most importantly, she has NO chance . . . ZERO, NONE, NUNCA, NUL . . . chance of attacting significant numbers of Independents and disaffected Republicans . . . which ANY Democratic candidate WILL NEED TO DO to win the General Election.