Obama Cries In His Beer

by Steve Soto

Senator Obama, did you want cheese with that whine?

Obama's campaign immediately delivered on his pledge to criticize Clinton. Aides distributed a memo and held a conference call to question why she won't release her tax returns. The Clinton campaign responded with a statement e-mailed to reporters while they were on the Obama call that said the Clintons' returns since they left the White House will be made public around April 15.

Obama reflected on the losses that broke a 12-contest winning streak in a talk with reporters aboard his campaign plane as he returned to his hometown of Chicago from San Antonio.

"There's no doubt that Senator Clinton went very negative over the last week," Obama said. He said the Clinton campaign's multiple attacks "had some impact" on the election results "particularly in the context where many of you in the press corps had been persuaded that you had been too hard on her and too soft on me."

"Complaining about the refs apparently worked a little bit this week," he said, equating members of the news media with referees in a sporting event.

"So hopefully in addition to my call to Lorne Michaels, hopefully now people feel like everything's evened out and we can start actually covering the campaign properly," he said.

Last night, I suggested that Hillary goad Obama into coming after her, so she could replay South Carolina upon him, this time by portraying herself as the underdog. Amazingly, Team Obama with little prompting already obliges her, and then compounds the error by mocking the same media that has been his biggest cheerleader.

After benefiting so much from favorable media coverage since the early days of this campaign, does Obama really think he is the right person to lecture them on "covering the campaign properly" the moment he doesn’t like the storyline?