Anticipation
January 6th, 2008This could get ugly, fast.
Hillary Clinton’s campaign, anticipating probable defeat here in New Hampshire on January 8, is gearing up for an extended trench-warfare battle against Barack Obama.
The former First Lady is planning to fight Obama in South Carolina on January 26, and in the gargantuan nationwide primary on Tuesday, February 5 — with contests in 19 states, including New York, California, New Jersey, Georgia, Minnesota, Massachusetts, and Colorado. If she remains competitive, Clinton’s plan is to continue to compete in Louisiana on February 9, in Virginia and Maryland on February 12, in Wisconsin on February 19, in Ohio on March 4 — and beyond, if necessary.
In an approach redolent of Walter Mondale’s 1984 “Where’s the Beef?” tactic against Gary Hart, Clinton has adopted the less memorable slogan “Rhetoric vs. Results, Talk vs. Action.”
The Clinton campaign is sparing no effort to pressure the media to lean on Obama’s perceived vulnerabilities. Looking to leverage Obama’s slender resume, a Clinton operative argued to HuffPost that the campaign will be able to demonstrate that “Obama is just not a plausible person in this environment of international peril,” and that the longer the primary campaign can be extended, the better chance Clinton will have to prove that “there is not even a second level to Obama, there is no depth.”
You thinking what I’m thinking? Am I thinking what the New York-Illinoisian Senator’s thinking? Is she thinking what George Bush was thinking after New Hampshire in 2000? I hope not, but a racist campaign is not something I’d be surprised to see. It might be a little less effective than the one Bush ran against McCain (”did you know he has a black baby?” push-poll phone calls in South Carolina) simply because Barack Obama having a black baby wouldn’t be a surprise to anyone by any stretch. But it might be more effective because Barack Obama is black, and in certain states an explicit reminder could be fatal.
Pardon me the cynicism, but when I read that the Clinton campaign is looking to dig in and fight in the trenches I start to feel a little uncomfortable.