{"id":68,"date":"2007-10-26T10:28:08","date_gmt":"2007-10-26T14:28:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/2parse.com\/?p=68"},"modified":"2007-10-26T10:28:08","modified_gmt":"2007-10-26T14:28:08","slug":"throwing-a-few-elbows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/?p=68","title":{"rendered":"“Throwing a few elbows…”"},"content":{"rendered":"

CNN has an article by a political analyst describing what Obama needs to do in order to gain ground on Clinton<\/a>.\u00a0 He needs to “get tough” and “show some fight.”\u00a0 Or as Obama has described it, to “throw a few elbows”.\u00a0 Obama’s political team certainly is ready to fight and fight back; and Obama himself has said he knows he needs to, and that he’s willing to.\u00a0 I do not quite buy the premise that many in the media seem to have that Obama has not wanted to “get tough”. I still maintain my position that this is part of the Obama campaign’s strategy to wait, and then begin, late in October or early November to make his move.\u00a0 This seems to be precisely what he is doing, hitting Clinton harder on Iraq and Iran, calling her out by name, and by suggestion.\u00a0 The press will need a story to write about in the next two months until the election.\u00a0 The “coronation” story will get boring, and with a quick succession of primaries and most voters still undecided, momentum could be everything.\u00a0 Only a ruthless political machine and a lot of money could stop the momentum an Obama win in Iowa would generate.\u00a0 And of course, this is precisely what Hillary brings to the table.\u00a0 If<\/em> Obama wins Iowa, and currently, he is not leading, the question will come down to this: can Obama’s campaign fight dirty enough to take out Hillary’s machine and sink her candidacy.<\/p>\n

A harsher critique of Clinton, highlighting her current hawkishness and her Bush-like views on executive privilege, continuing to harp on her divisiveness; a Gore endorsement; one or two more Clinton mistakes; a few strong sound bites that get play; and a bit of luck.\u00a0 With these on his side, Obama takes Iowa and sets up the real contest: where Hillary and Obama slug it out and all sorts of stories about Obama are leaked to Drudge, The New York Post<\/em> and Fox News.\u00a0 How Obama would respond to this hypothetical onslaught – that undoubtedly would become real in the event he wins Iowa or New Hampshire – will determine if he becomes president.\u00a0 I believe this will be the real test.\u00a0 If Obama’s “politics of hope” can survive and not be tarnished by “throwing a few elbows”, and if he is able to thwart Clinton in this, he will have proven he has the stuff to win the general election.<\/p>\n

He will have proven that he is a candidate the Democrats can accept, as the piece in CNN said:<\/p>\n

Democrats are tired of being bullied. They want a candidate who will punch bullies in the nose.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CNN has an article by a political analyst describing what Obama needs to do in order to gain ground on Clinton.\u00a0 He needs to “get tough” and “show some fight.”\u00a0 Or as Obama has described it, to “throw a few elbows”.\u00a0 Obama’s political team certainly is ready to fight and fight back; and Obama himself […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[22,6,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-68","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-election-2008","category-obama","category-politics"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8qcx-16","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=68"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=68"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=68"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=68"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}