Hillary, Barack and John

Hillary Clinton has really run a poor campaign during this primary season. I'm really not sure what she and her staff have been thinking. Lately her campaign seems to have two personalities. One personality seems cool, collected... presidential. This personality was in play during the debate the other night and seemed very cordial and likable. Then the second personality of her campaign jumped in with the 'xerox™' line and got booed. This weekend the second personality has been on the attack and its not been a pretty sight to see. The more she does this the more ground she cedes to Obama.

Maybe there is nothing else for her but to go negative but the real problem for her is that she's never really sold a lot of people on why, beyond her name recognition, she should be president. The experience that she's been delivering for the past couple months does not really hold up. Obama has pretty much the same amount of experience if you really look at it and if she does get the nomination John McCain certainly has several times more experience than both of them. Experience is a non starter for the Democrats for the fall campaign. 'Change' would seem a much better message to sell against McCain and a failed Republican party.

I hear a lot of her supporters echoing the charge that Obama is all rhetoric and no substance. This seems to me to be a weak argument. Presidential campaigns are often all about rhetoric. Clinton herself uses quite a bit of it. 'Ready on day one' is the one that comes to mind. Can she actually back this up? How can you prove that you'll be ready on day one. As far as I can tell the only presidential candidates that are ever ready on day one are the ones that already have the job, that are already sitting presidents running for their second terms.

I don't see how the latest negative line is going to help her on March 4. The youtube video of her latest attack on Obama where she compares him to the republicans is just out of line (Andrew Sullivan has it up so I won't bother to repost it here.) We are in a historic moment; the next president will most probably not be either male or white. Someone is going to lose this primary fight and Clinton is not looking like a winner right now. If she continues to attack Obama in this way I think she's running the risk of damaging herself for another run for the job. And make no mistake, after this year we are going to be seeing a lot more candidates for high office who aren't white males. I'm 100 percent sure there will be a woman president in my lifetime but if Clinton keeps up the way she is going I doubt it will be her.