Want to understand the last month or so of the nomination campaign? Well, one lens into it is provided by what the candidates did, as compared to two Politico articles about What They Wish They Could Say that were published in APRIL.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/040
8/9564.html
http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?u
uid=A4B83756-3048-5C12-0041E3B83E0D4634
As a diary on the rec list, citing a Politico story What She Wishes She could Say points out, in April, Clinton wished she could raise questions about Obama's electability. In particular, Clinton might claim that Obama had problems with blue-collar whites, Hispanics and Jews and that these would persist into the general election.
Guess what? Clinton did that. What Politico said -- on April 13 -- she could do, but was holding back doing, she went ahead and did it.
And Obama? What was the strategic path not yet taken Politico described?
Well, it was laying bare all the "baggage" of the Clintons, all the issues about their associations that the Republicans would certainly raise.
This includes old issues, like Hillary Clinton's legal career, which includes lots of cases that never got much public attention even during the Whitewater era.
It also includes new ones, like recent stories raising questions about the web of personal and financial associations around Bill Clinton.
There was a January New York Times story, which did not get the attention the reporting deserved, highlighting how this Canadian tycoon and major Bill Clinton benefactor was using his ties to the ex-president to win business with a ruthless dictatorship in Khazakstan.)
There's the Marc Rich situation, who was pardoned by Bill Clinton and who gave money to Hillary's Senate campaign.
And there's family issues.
He has never mentioned her brothers, even though Hugh and Tony Rodham once defied Bill Clinton's own top foreign policy advisers by entering into a strange investment in hazelnuts in the former Soviet republic of Georgia (they later dropped the deal) and Hugh Rodham took large cash payments for trying to broker presidential pardons.
There are political issues as well, such as the disaster the Clinton years were for Democrats in Congress, and the very real problems associated with Hillary's inability to work with others to get health care reform.
The article GOES ON AND ON WITH A LARGE RANGE OF POTENTIAL ISSUES OBAMA COULD HAVE BROUGHT UP.
And guess what -- He's never done it.
Obama has treated Hillary Clinton with kid gloves, by and large. A certain diarist takes the Clinton approach -- to go there as a sign she's a real fighter. Personally, I'm glad I'm supporting the candidate who knows that in a fight among friends, an intra-party contest, there are limits.
I know he's going to after McCain hard -- He's already doing it. And so I'm proud that in January I switched from supporting Clinton to supporting Obama and that soon, unless sometimes very odd happens, he will be our nominee.
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