What Obama Must Do To Beat Hillary

[ihavenobias]

What Obama Must Do
by Cenk Uygur 11/20/2007

1. Sear into people's minds that experience means nothing. It is not end in and of itself. It is only a means to an end. Experience is supposed to lead you to having better judgment, but very often it does not.

The two most experienced government officials of our lifetimes were Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld. Their experience did not help them to have any better judgment, so it was wasted. The most experienced politician of our lifetimes was Strom Thurmond. Do you think his experience helped him?

The goal is good judgment. Experience is one of the many things that might contribute to good judgment, but it is not a proxy for it. Experience by itself means nothing. The real question is who has better judgment? Say it again and again. Judgment, judgment, judgment. Pound it home.

2. If Senator Clinton was named Senator Hillary Smith would she be the front runner today? No way in the world she would be. You know it, I know it and every American, if they stopped to think about it for a minute, knows it.

Make them stop and think about it for a minute.

Some might say that's unfair because her last name is not random. Since she was married to the president, she was in the White House for eight years. But think about what that argument means. We're supposed to be impressed that she was the First Lady for eight years?

People will say she was intimately involved in policy at the White House. Remember after her healthcare plan failed, the Clinton administration repositioned her as the person who took care of the china at the White House. Not China policy, but the china people ate off of.

The Obama campaign can't find dozens of quotes from those years where the administration repeatedly said she had no hand in shaping the president's policy?

This might seem unsavory to some people, but we're not playing patty-cakes here. Obama is down by over 20 points in the national polls despite his recent surge. Does he want to win or not?

It is a perfectly legitimate question to ask whether Senator Clinton has any experience at all besides being a senator for a short period of time (where she was completely ineffectual in stopping the worst and most unpopular president in US history). Does being a First Lady really count?

3. Speaking of not playing patty-cakes, when is Senator Obama going to make an effective case that Senator Clinton is the most right-wing Democratic candidate in the race? I'm not saying she's Joe Lieberman, but based on her voting record and her record of non-leadership in the Senate, she is to the right of all the other Democratic candidates.

I don't think she's a member of the vast right-wing conspiracy. And I'm positive she would make an infinitely better president than any of the Republicans running. But there is a reason why so many progressive activists are frustrated with her. She buys into Republican talking points and sometimes votes that way, especially before the election season was upon us. A flag burning law? Really?

Does Obama not realize that he is in a Democratic primary? And that most of the voters in that primary think Hillary Clinton is the most liberal of the candidates, not the most conservative? It might help to point out that the opposite is true...


For the rest:

http://www.theyoungturks.com/story/2007/11/20/102041/82/Diary/What-Obama-Must-Do