Hillary in the Cat-Bird Seat
Clinton in Ohio: 'Who Is for You?' McCain Thanks NASCAR Drivers for Supporting the Troops
By Lois Romano and Anne E. Kornblut Washington Post Staff Writers Monday, September 15, 2008; A02
ELYRIA, Ohio, Sept. 14 -- Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton on Sunday made a pair of campaign stops in this important battleground for former rival Sen. Barack Obama, generating large, passionate crowds -- and barely mentioning Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.
"This election is going to be a game changer," an energized Clinton (D-N.Y.) said. "We have the opportunity to go beyond the failed policies of the last eight years. I hear a lot of talk about this election, people asking, 'Who are you for?' That's not right question. The right question is: 'Who is for you?' "
Clinton mentioned Palin just twice in speeches here and in Akron, in one instance repeating an earlier line: "No way, no how, no McCain and no Palin."
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Hillary thought the world dealt her a low blow when she lost the nomination, but the powers that be have a strange way of protecting idiots, the indigent and occasional Democrats. On the basis of 'it's the least she can do,' she's doing the least possible for Barack Obama.
It's not going to work for the Obama campaign, this push to refocus on John McCain. Sarah Palin is the current vulnerable target and if Obama's strategists don't realize that, if they don't see her getting all the press while McCain sits back in the bus, then they misunderstand Karl Rove and will lose this election.
The Swift-Boat billionaire ad campaign is being readied in Texas. It's very difficult to know just what--if anything--is being readied in the Obama campaign headquarters. We have all seen this movie twice before.
Whichever man wins the White House, he's going to think cleaning up Katrina and Ike was a cake-walk compared to an America on economic life-support. The next four years are going to rend this nation from end to end and, guess what?--Hillary will be safely in her Senate seat, looking on.
My personal forecast is thus: If McCain wins, the country will slide into further disarray. If Obama wins, it may well follow that same course, but with better rhetoric and a Congress (presumably with a filibuster-proof majority) that will operate as all congresses do--in it's own interest and in the interest of personal salvation. That may effect some long-needed structural change, but too late in the game to avoid a depression and the destruction of a tenuous global economic equilibrium.
In the event Obama loses, I look to him to serve out his current Senate term, retire from politics and take his choice of plum university presidencies.
Interestingly, in any of the above scenarios, the much lamenting and lamented Hillary comes out as the 'strong leader we needed' and who would have saved us, had we merely the good sense to call on her.
Or, what the legendary baseball commentator, Red Barber, called "the cat-bird seat."