Saturday's Surprises

So she proved me wrong, more or less. Hillary picked a fight (over Obama direct mail pieces that are weeks old) and challenged Obama to debate his tactics in Ohio on Tuesday.

Taking offense at what you suddenly define as dirty negative campaigning is not a completely stupid move, at least not in another campaign. Obama quickly called her on the timing and the content of her charges. Hillary's play was largely seen as desperate, especially in its tone, but also due to the ease of seeing through it. She attacked Obama for criticizing her health care plan, although she's been criticizing his for months. Ditto on NAFTA--what she says are lies may technically be corrections to a specific quote that should indeed have been made by now, but substantively, the evidence that the charges are true are on the public record. The whole thing is on Youtube already.

In her criticism of Obama, she asked, "Since when do Democrats attack one another on universal health care?"Obama had a ready reply to that. "Well, when she started to say I was against universal health care ... which she does every single day," he said. If Hillary actually believes what she said, it's a textbook example of projection, fueled perhaps by denial.

Hillary's "Shame on you, Barack Obama" got her today's headlines. It also lost her every male vote in Texas and probably Ohio, and possibly every female one under age 50. Except those regressive types who want to be bullied by mom on a tirade.

Hillary was into shaming alot on Saturday, it seems. She said America didn't know enough about the charming G.W. Bush and look what happened. Now they were making the same mistake with Obama. "Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me." She actually said that. Made it up herself, too.

At least she got the whole schoolyard cliche out correctly, more than G.W. himself was able to do. But maybe the more pertinent comparison--and certainly the funnier--is in the Sunday column by Frank Rich, when he compares the Clinton campaign to Iraq--you know, shock & awe, mission accomplished, blindsided by the insurgency, denial, no exit strategy, etc. I guess now it's the Surge. Rich also catalogues some of the many missteps and absurdities, such as the machinist union leader who introduced Hillary's speech last Tuesday talking about Obama's supporters as "latte-drinking, Prius-driving, Birkenstock-wearing, trust-fund babies.” "Less than 24 hours later," Rich notes, " Mr. Obama received the endorsement of the latte-drinking Teamsters."

Literally standing behind Hillary as she made these charges was Ohio Governor Ted Strickland, feeling a little striken perhaps as he watches his chances at being vice-president drain away. He'd already been reported as telling political colleagues that he wasn't sure he could hold his state for Clinton.

Meanwhile, supporters like Kathleen Kennedy Townsend and former Bill Clinton press secretary Dede Myers were publicly offering their obituaries for the Clinton campaign and scornfully describing its mistakes.

So now Hillary has called Obama out for the Tuesday debate. By then, he'll have been in Ohio a few days, building enthusiasm there. It's likely to be Hillary's last stand.

And while this was going on, all the fun was in Texas. Obama had a huge, huge rally in Austin. The Tom DeLay redistricting and state Republicans trying to suppress Democratic turnout placed the early voting site for the Prairie View A&M university 7 miles from campus. Students responded by marching those 7 miles to vote in such large numbers that they shut down traffic on the highway. The Obama ground operation is blowing away the Clinton efforts in Texas and Ohio, and elsewhere. (They're even in North Carolina and Wyoming, and of course, Pennsylvania.) Now it's true that in this last string of victories the Obama campaign hasn't been up against the full Clinton effort and (in Ohio) state machinery backing her. If the Obama tide can overcome it and turn all this enthusiasm into victories in those states, Hillary is truly done. And if she doesn't admit it and stand down, shame on her.