Obama-Clinton: Would you rather fight or switch?

[babylonsister]

http://www.swamppolitics.com/news/politics/blog/2008/02/obamaclinton_would_you_rather.html

Obama-Clinton: Would you rather fight or switch?

By Michael Tackett


A central predicate of Hillary Clinton's campaign has been that she alone can withstand the unrelenting attack that inevitably will come from the Republican Party in the fall campaign.

She rarely fails to remind audiences that she is still standing after all those investigations, all the fighting and the millions of dollars spent trying to take her out.

"I'm still here," she likes to say with a half smile and grim determination. Typically, it's a big applause line.

Barack Obama's campaign comes at the issue from the opposite perspective. His view: Why does it always have to be about the fight?

snip//

The hope-versus-fear calculus is typically framed in terms of Democrats against Republicans. Right now, it is a fight within the Democratic Party.

And Obama seems to be pulling ahead.

[dmkinsey]

1. True

If we elect Sen. Obama we still may not be able to move off the bitter partisan battle field that we've been on for the past 12 years but if we elect Sen. Clinton we will certainly be stuck on that battle field for years more.

[Justyce]

2. Fight. Republicans don't budge on their issues - why should we be the ones to keep giving in? nt

[enid602]

5. memo

Haven't you received the memo? Republican Presidents are supposed to start out all lawyered-up, hitting the ground running and never compomising on anything. Dem Presidents are expected to be accomodating and more bipartisan. After eight years of Bush's plundering the treasury, endless warfare and SC packing, we're now ready for a 'feel good' president. Can't risk all these gains on someone who might be perceived as polarizing.

[lligrd]

3. If She Can't Survive The Unrelenting Attacks That The

Clinton supporters keep claiming she is so unfairly receiving in the primaries. How the heck can they keep claiming she can survive them in the GE?

[Rageneau]

6. She IS surviviing unrelenting attacks in the primary.

Not a day goes by without some new, usually completely unfair attack being published about Hillary and it immediately goes from from coast to coast, gets in all the papers and on all the networks, is repeated incessantly on hate radio and spammed across cyberworld pervading into even such previous bastions of fairmindness such as DU.

The attacks on Hillary are unfair and unrelenting -- and they come from all quarters. Obama has never in his life faced anything remotely similar to it. Indeed, his political life has been charmed; he is the Golden Child. He'd be off the field already, in the locker room sulking, if he had to take for one month what Hillary has faced every day for 20 years.

And yet, with all the BOmentum going on and all the help he has been getting from the MSM, Hillary is still in this contest, maybe even has a slight advantage.

Because, like she says: She is a fighter.

[lligrd]

7. The BOmentum?

And you claim Obama isn't being attacked?

[babylonsister]

8. You're seeing willful ignorance in all its glory. There's lots of that

going around.

[RaleighNCDUer]

4. The "Fighting Hillary" meme is a con.

She's had exactly ONE major fight in her political life, healthcare in 94, and she LOST, rolled over, and did nothing more with it for the remainder of Clinton's term.

She's used the First Lady soapbox as an unassailable position to make statements - some of them very good ones, as in her Bejing speech - but the fact is she could NOT be voted out of office for anything she said.

When she ran for Senator her only real opposition was Guiliani, and he dropped out - winning by default may still be a win, but it is not a fight. On her reelection campaign she had the power of the incumbancy combined with a moron for an opponant running in a blue state - all she really had to do was show up.

Her primary contest v/ Edwards and Obama was the FIRST real political fight of her career. The results are becoming apparent.