Clinton's Comeback and Obama's Challenge

One thing is clear: Hillary Clinton has won her Comeback Kid spurs and, despite the challenges ahead, shown remarkable political resilience. Has it been worth the price?

Editorially today the New York Times condemns the Pennsylvania campaign and calls on Clinton to acknowledge that "the negativity, for which she is mostly responsible, does nothing but harm to her, her opponent, her party and the 2008 election."

On the eve of the primary, the editorial contends, "Mrs. Clinton became the first Democratic candidate to wave the bloody shirt of 9/11. A Clinton television ad--torn right from Karl Rove’s playbook--evoked the 1929 stock market crash, Pearl Harbor, the Cuban missile crisis, the cold war and the 9/11 attacks, complete with video of Osama bin Laden. 'If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen,' the narrator intoned.

"If that was supposed to bolster Mrs. Clinton’s argument that she is the better prepared to be president in a dangerous world, she sent the opposite message on Tuesday morning by declaring in an interview on ABC News that if Iran attacked Israel while she were president: 'We would be able to totally obliterate them.'"

The nagging question is whether the contest for the Democratic nomination will end in a Pyrrhic victory that could give Republicans a chance to hold onto the White House that was unthinkable even a few months ago.

With Clinton sounding more and more like McCain, Obama's failure in all this has been not to find a way to answer personal attacks without being deflected from the positive, inclusive message that has brought him so far in such a short time.

In defending himself, Obama has lost some of his focus and reinforced doubts about his inexperience in hardball presidential politics. He will have to work hard to regain it in the remaining primaries.

Pyrrhic Victory, Anyone?

Amid two tiny wins yesterday--in the Wyoming caucuses and the taking of Dennis Hastert's House seat by an Obama admirer--his supporters and Hillary Clinton's were hard at work to snatch defeat from the jaws of expected Democratic victory in November.

After the candidate's claim this week that only she and John McCain had crossed "the commander-in chief threshold," Clinton's campaign generalissimos were e-mailing journalists a memo headed "Obama's Iraq Plan: Just Words":

"Once again, it looks like Senator Obama is telling voters one thing while his campaign says those words should not to be mistaken for serious action...

"Senator Obama has made hard end dates about Iraq a centerpiece of his campaign and has repeatedly attacked Senator Clinton for not being clear about her intentions with regard to troop withdrawal.

"It turns out those attacks and speeches were just words. And if you can't trust Senator Obama's words, what's left?"

His campaign fired back: "The Clinton campaign has publicly admitted that the only way they can still win this election is by tearing Barack Obama down. They have called their attacks the 'kitchen sink strategy'...The result has been a constant barrage of attacks about Senator Obama's record that they know full well aren't true. And yet they repeat them, over and over again, day after day, in an attempt to deceive the American people..."

Well said, word warriors. Those people taking notes are from the Republican swiftboat squad, who will be happy to immortalize them, no matter which Democrat wins the nomination.