Wednesday, March 05, 2008

Kitchen Sink

Contrary to a lot of the CW, I don't think a long drawn-out battle between Clinton and Obama is a bad thing in and of itself. There are plenty of precedents for the out party having a long nomination process and still doing well in the general. Plus, it gives the Dems lots of media attention at a time when the GOP side has sunk into the background a bit, what with McCain already clinching it. But Clinton's strategy is now quite clearly to either win the nomination or take the entire party down with her. Via Sullivan, I noticed James Fallows flagging this bit about Clinton's rhetoric:
In a live CNN interview just now, Sen. Clinton repeated, twice, the "Sen. McCain has a lifetime of experience, I have a lifetime of experience, Sen. Obama has one speech in 2002" line. By what logic, exactly, does a member of the Democratic party include the "Sen. McCain has a lifetime of experience" part of that sentence?

Is there any precedent for a serious candidate for party nomination to claim that a member of the opposing party would be a better candidate for president than would a member of their own party? Imagine Obama gets the nomination, which is still very likely even after Ohio and Texas. We now have Clinton, one of the powerhouses of the party, on record repeatedly stating that McCain is a better candidate. How can Howard Dean or others not step in at this point and admonish her?

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