Obama Better Battle Back
By: Dick Morris and Eileen McGann
FrontPageMagazine.com | Thursday, March 06, 2008
With big wins in
Ohio and Texas last night, Hillary Clinton has finally broken her losing streak
and sent a clear message to Barack Obama: I'm not getting out.
For the Illinois senator, the meaning of the
primaries is clear - he has to get tough. Hillary can still win this nomination.
The proportional representation system of allocating delegates chosen by
primaries and caucuses mutes the impact of the popular vote.
By the time the Texas caucuses are fully counted,
Obama may have maintained or even expanded his delegate lead, despite Hillary's
victories in three out of four states.
Among the remaining 600 delegates to be chosen,
Obama should be able to add to his lead.
But there remain 800 superdelegates, each entitled
to a full v ote. No matter if Obama leads among elected delegates, they can
still deliver the nomination to Hillary.
Do they dare?
If Clinton is able to score a series of
popular-vote victories in these late primaries, she could lay the basis for an
appeal to the superdelegates to disregard the results of January and February
and look instead at her success in the later contests.
The battle of Hillary is over. The battle of Obama
has begun.
The question of
his readiness and experience looms ever larger in the minds of the media and of
voters.
Her red-phone
ad, citing her supposedly superior readiness to be commander in chief, evidently
cut deeply among the electorate.
It's time that
Obama counters her strategy by hitting back. His lofty politics of hope will
avail him little in the aggressive, rough-and-tumble world of modern
politics.
He's got to
spell out the special-interest connections that stigmatize Hillary as the tool
of the lobbyists.
He must
underscore the need for her to release her tax returns for 2007 and 2006 to show
the source of her new-found wealth.
He's got to
learn to trade blows with the Clintons, the best counterpunchers in the
business.
Looming above
the primaries is the specter of the unseated delegations from Michigan - chosen
in a primary with only Hillary's name on the ballot - and Florida.
Obama needs to stop her gathering momentum by
shedding his ingenue status and fighting hard for the nomination his previous
victories have earned him.
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