Down But Not Out?

"Although it will take days and weeks to show, the unsinkable Hillary for President operation has succumbed to an iceberg of titanic dimensions."

Joe Sudbay at Americablog says there's no arguing with success: "It looks like Democrats are coalescing around their new front runner. Let's keep this in perspective. Just a couple months ago, no one was predicting this outcome. Barack Obama went up against the Clinton machine, and their aura of invincibility. Yet, he keeps winning. Wait, not just winning. He is dominating the races."

At Portfolio, Matt Cooper (who's married to Hillary adviser Mandy Grunwald) offers change-the-subject advice:

"Clinton needs to completely reframe the race at this point. Experience didn't work as an argument. Ready on Day One? Who cares? She needs an issue that can galvanize her support but given the small policy differences with Obama, she doesn't have much to work with. I don't know why the campaign hasn't done more with Obama's saying that he was open lifting the taxable income cap on Social Security above its current $97,000. That's a huge tax increase for people who don't think they're rich. It's a place to start."

How does the Hillary camp keep discounting Barack's victories? That's what Ari Berman wants to know, in the Nation:

"The Clinton campaign has been busy inventing new reasons for why Barack Obama keeps winning state after state . . .

"Either the state has a caucus, or too many black people, or too many affluent people, or too many independent voters, or too many red staters. If only the Clintons had the perfect electoral map.

"If only.

"If only the Clintons had a coherent explanation for why Obama has so thoroughly out-organized and out-hussled them across the country in February. After all, there was no reason why Hillary Clinton, after spending eight years in the White House and amassing a hefty war chest of money and incumbency in the Senate, couldn't of won caucus states, or red states, or states with large African-American communities. The front-runner is supposed to win these places. If Obama had lost eight states in a row, his candidacy would most certainly of been toast."

Here, from the New Republic's Michael Crowley, is an example of what I was talking about as far as Obama being allowed to skate:

"The press's failure to closely examine Obama's Iraq record is a source of perpetual frustration for the Clinton camp--and a fair gripe. It has allowed Obama's supporters to mythologize him as a fearless crusader. At the same time, it has enabled the Clintons to mount overzealous attacks on his record.

"Many of the Clintons' specific attacks on Obama are unfair distortions. But it's also true that a close look at his Iraq record reveals more nuance than the Obama campaign acknowledges. It shows that Obama is cautious and pragmatic, hardly immune from political pressures, and sometimes prone to shading his rhetoric for convenience. But, ultimately, in substantive policy terms, he is also open to intellectual reexamination based on changing events. This may not be quite the Obama of the popular imagination, and it is certainly not the Obama of his own campaign ads. Nor is it, after 2002, substantially different from Hillary Clinton's own course on Iraq. But it is no 'fairy tale,' either."