Throw Him A Curve Hillary

by Steve Soto

AP photo

In the space of four hours tonight, the MSNBC crew, Keith Olbermann chief among them, did a 180. They started the evening questioning how Hillary could put herself ahead of the party by not withdrawing, to begrudgingly acknowledging that there is no reason for her to leave the race in the aftermath of her improbable victories in three of four contests, including a come-from-behind victory in Texas.

The media delayed its burial of Hillary, and pivoted its attention to how nasty and potentially damaging the Democratic race is likely to be between now and Pennsylvania. The pundits were salivating at the prospect of seven weeks of knife-fight coverage, and spewed the conventional wisdom that the GOP and McCain benefit from a continued Democratic battle, even though today’s Washington Post poll showed that Democrats want this race to continue all the way to the end.

All agreed that Hillary would likely continue the recent attacks against Obama heading up to Pennsylvania, and lapped up David Axelrod’s words that they would respond in kind to any Hillary attacks upon Obama. So all the pundits seem to gleefully agree that Hillary will take a baseball bat to Obama, and he to her these seven weeks, in a contest that will run to a possible do-over of the Michigan and Florida primaries in June, where at the end neither candidate will still have enough to go over the top.

But what if Hillary throws them all, and Obama for a loop?

What if Hillary decides to shift away from attacking Obama and instead goads him into attacking her now, like he did to her leading up to South Carolina? What if she frustrates him, catches him off guard, and doesn’t come out of the box swinging? What if she instead starts attacking McCain and making the case that she is better able to run as a true Democrat against McCain’s strengths and weaknesses than Obama can? What if she draws the contrast with Obama not with personal or character attacks, but with direct arguments that she is a better advocate for progressive causes and concerns against McCain on issues such as the economy, health care, protecting Social Security, tax fairness, the Supreme Court, energy independence, and the environment? In other words, what if she runs more as a Democrat than he does?

Obama builds his campaign around counterpunching, not attacking first, and around appealing to independents and wayward Republicans. Yet the Pennsylvania primary is a Democrat-only race, where Hillary can make an appeal based on who is really the best Democrat against McCain on the issues and his weaknesses in the general election. If she can get the jump on Obama without giving his campaign the opportunity to counterpunch a Clinton shot, perhaps she can turn the tables on him from South Carolina and get them to overreach against her.

I argued weeks ago that Hillary could benefit by portraying herself as the underdog against Obama, and yet also as the one true Democratic fighter against McCain in the fall. Now would be a great time to road test that strategy.