A Running Commentary

How pissed off are the Clintonistas right now? No matter what Hillary does she cannot seem to score. The release yesterday of the “phone call” ad was a classic Clinton move (view below). A pointed, attention grabbing commercial released with impeccable timing so as to dominate a full news cycle, gaining gargantuan free exposure as every news outlet reran the spot into oblivion throughout the day.

But where the Clinton’s have always been the feisty ones, they’re suddenly incapable of landing a punch. The Obama camp is now the young nimble campaign, releasing a response ad by days end. The media focused almost immediately more on how Hillary was “going negative” than whether Obama is sufficiently experienced. The momentum machine is in love with the 3-year senator, and the lack of a legitimate examination of his credentials should be scary for Democrats. John McCain and the GOP are definitely licking their chops.

Hillary’s question is an exceedingly legitimate one for political debate, especially in this troubled time of terrorism. Terrorism is scary, and the commercial had to raise that truth in order to make its point. Deflecting the real issue in order to discuss the charges of “going negative” and “scare tactics” is utter bunk. But that is what Obama did and the mainstream media has largely let him off the hook.

Why does pointing out an opponent’s credentials, or lack thereof, constitute a negative attack? Is Obama “going negative” when he claims Hillary exercised poor judgment in voting for the war? Is John McCain going negative when he says Obama is naïve to think we can save money by pulling out of Iraq now, then going back if needed? Whether or not one agrees with these arguments, they constitute legitimate political points of contention. None of these candidates are calling into question the other’s ancestry. This is what campaigns are SUPPOSED to be about.

“Going negative” is not saying “George W. Bush led us into the Iraqi war.” He DID lead the country into Iraq. A negative attack is when Al Franken or some similar blithering idiot claims that George W. Bush is a moral reprobate whose selfish war mongering lead to war. Or Ann Coulter insinuates Hillary Clinton’s is a flash-eating fembot devoid of political intelligence. Even if true, these statements constituted negative attacks, not debatable points of political ideology. THAT’S going negative.

We need the campaigns to tackle and address important issues. Barack Obama is dangerously close to being the next President of the United States. And that guy has ZERO experience in world affairs. None. Liberals love to point out how little experience the current president had but just being around his father would have given him more than Obama.

If that guy is going to be the ‘leader of the free world’, voters had better consider how inexperienced he is as part of the political debate. The fact that the Clintonistas can’t make that point to Democrats is a telling mark of the ineffective and hopelessly late blooming state of Hillary’s campaign. One of Obama’s staffers apparently responded to the commercial yesterday saying “the commercial is unrealistic, the phone doesn’t really ring like that.” Well, they’re wrong. It DOES ring like that and who answers it, what experience they have, and what judgment they will show are ALL legitimate questions that the campaigns need to answer.