The oddness of Clinton's campaign

I am baffled but what I read as Clinton's continued timidity in going after Obama. She goes after his high flying rhetoric but that is it. It is odd. That is the only word I have right now to describe it. Odd. She could go after his record. She could go after him on facts. Cold Hard Facts. His unwillingness to buck Bush on the war, his cowardly voting record, the disconnect between what he says and what he has done. There are many reasons to resist voting for Obama. People WANT TO BE GIVEN REASONS. Until they get them it is a race between a great speaker and a person trying to trip the great speaker up.

The party is almost over for Clinton. She has either opted for losing with some dignity, or there is some news about Obama out there that will hurt him and save her. I am a believer in hardball politics. People say they are sick of it - but we lie to ourselves. We love it. Obama and Axelrod have played hardball with Hillary. They have ensured, with the help of Olberman and Huffington and the rest, that the story is Hillary's downfall - NOT Obama's qualifications.

The Obama campaign of 2008 and Bush's in 2000 are similar in this: Both men run on unity - while supporters in the media and elsewhere do all the dirty work. Olberman is compulsive at this point in his love for Obama. Cutting into Hardball yesterday to "break" news from the NY Times that 10 years ago McCain had a blonde around. This was hardly about McCain and all about attacking Obama's perceived opponent. All day the story had been Michelle Obama's stupid remark about finally having pride in America. Keith Olberman could not take it. His lover was being slimed.

Obama has had the benefit, like Bush in 2000, of a media that has already decided on him being the winner. The media does his dirty work so that he doesn't have to. Hillary seemingly has no friends in the media left. Like it or not - it is and has been - up to her campaign to balance the imbalance in the media. She has not done it. Hardball politics is happening. MSNBC has thrown down for Obama. Fox News has gone silent - in large part because they know Obama is much more beatable that Clinton in a general ( any world event, like the riots today in Kososvo, shine a brutal light on Obama's youth and a glowing light on McCain's experience. This will become more evident as the general election approaches. One "national security" news cycle in October - a bombing, an attack on the flow of world oil and suddenly all Obama's crap about "sitting down to talk" to world leaders is rendered childish.)
CNN remains in the nether-land of "please watch us, too!" and are mostly a pointless network.

So the nomination slips from Hillary's grasp. And she stands by and lets it go. For a person who detractors say "will do anything" to win she is not putting up much of a fight. It's odd.