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Real Clear Politics - April 01, 2008
Trying to Shove Hillary Aside
By Marie Cocco
WASHINGTON -- Have you noticed something similar about those Barack Obama campaign surrogates and the media soothsayers who have started a drum-beat to force Hillary Clinton out of the Democratic presidential contest? Hint: They tend to share a certain anatomical attribute.
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Since we're talking boy-talk here, we might as well get right into their rhetorical comfort zone: Obama now is ahead by a field goal in the third quarter. But the fourth quarter has yet to be played and who knows what the score will be at the end of regulation? So here's their plan, hatched in the locker room: Push Clinton off the field now so that Obama can take his early victory lap.
Obama denies that he is personally behind this strategy. But let's face it. The pronouncements by Sens. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Chris Dodd, D-Conn., both big-name Obama supporters and superdelegates, that Clinton needs to limp away with her head held low looked terribly orchestrated.
Leahy was particularly odious when, after declaring Clinton had "no way" to win the nomination, he offered her a very warm seat. It happens to be one she already holds and it is, of course, comfortably below the glass ceiling. "Frankly, I feel that she would have a tremendous career in the Senate," Leahy declared.
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Maybe it is true that Clinton has no realistic way to win the nomination. But Obama hasn't won it either -- and contrary to the myth his campaign has spun, Obama can't win without superdelegates to put him over the top.
Somehow the Obama campaign has come to believe that insulting Clinton is the same as beating her. It isn't. And insulting her supporters -- especially women and, in particular, working-class women, who have clung to her candidacy all these months -- isn't much of a general-election victory strategy. Women were 54 percent of the electorate in the presidential election of 2004. Without their support, Al Gore would not have won the popular vote in 2000 and John Kerry wouldn't have come so close in 2004. Women voters put Democrats in control of Congress in 2006.
So, the Obama campaign can continue trying to get its allies in the media and various party pooh-bahs to push Clinton aside early. Or Obama can welcome the fight -- and win it like a man.
www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/04/the_men_try_to_shove_hillary_o.html
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