Obama & Co. Stop Taking the Bait
You have more delegates, much more money, you're John McCain to her Mike Huckabee.
So why act as if she's on equal footing? Because the Clintons are acting as if they are and
the Obama camp is letting them. Her floating the idea of him working for her a few weeks ago was genius. Chutzpah on steroids.
This is causing real problems for Obama.
The answer isn't for Hillary to quit, it's for Obama to convince her supporters to abandon her.Hillary Clinton is still virtually tied with Obama nationwide. Pundits and Obama supporters (like me) might wish that the millions and millions of Hillary Clinton supporters get with the program but instead they are becoming more and more energized and entrenched. They, in general, are less-college-educated, blue-collar whites, the famous "Reagan Democrats," whom if Obama loses to McCain, he loses the election. Those rank-and-file white Democrats haven't gotten the message that Hillary's cause is now virtually hopeless.
Look, I'm not saying don't answer Hillary's attacks in some way but
the conversation cannot be between Obama and Clinton as if they each have an equal shot. Obama needs to talk past Clinton to Clinton's supporters. Catching Clinton in overhyping her experience or making any other calculating, political moves will not peel off many of her voters. She has been in the public eye too long.
The people that support her understand that she fights dirty, that her ways aren't pretty. They actually see that as her strength. It was the same with Bush and the Swiftboaters. His supporters knew Bush was playing nasty but they were afraid of being blown up by a suicide bomber in the frozen food aisle of their Super Wal-Mart so wanted a nasty man to fight a nasty enemy.
Hillary bills herself as a fighter and as long as working-class white Democrats think that she'll fight harder for them than Obama will they will support her.
What to do?
Obama needs to formulate a broadly populist message aimed squarely at the rust belt. That means that ending partisan bickering will not be job one but fighting for the little guy.
Obama needs to do what Hillary has been doing so successfully since Super Tuesday.
He needs to channel his inner Edwards. That will begin to win him the working class white men.And for all those older white women he needs to have his aides float the idea that Hillary has been such a worthy opponent, has proven to have such a large following and is such a history maker himself that when he is the nominee she will be his first choice for VP.
The fact that it is still this close, this late in the game, means that they are getting hitched whether they like it or not.
Trey Ellis is the author of Bedtime Stories: Adventures in the Land of Single-Fatherhood.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/trey-ellis/obama-co-stop-taking-t_b_93528.html
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