'Hillary Clinton is a Monster'... You Betcha

The race for the Democratic Presidential nomination has gotten even uglier, if that's possible. Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson compared Obama to Ken Starr, while Hillary Clinton, as reported by PM's David Knowles, questioned the Illinois Senator's readiness to lead in the most open fashion yet, and an aide to Barack Obama called Hillary Clinton a "monster" yesterday, then apologized. From The Daily News:

During an interview with The Scotsman, Samantha Power, one of Obama's unpaid advisers, said Clinton would stop at nothing in her zeal to seize the lead from Obama.

"She is a monster, too - that is off the record - she is stooping to anything," Power said, hastily trying to withdraw her remark.

The Obama campaign wisely repudiated the remarks, and Samantha Power apologized, in order to try to retain the high ground. In reality, though, Hillary Clinton is playing the role of a very famous monster, the mythical Golem. Karl Rove's Golem, to be precise. He made his incantations yesterday, and the beast obeyed.

After the jump, a look at the rest of the rampage, what to expect next, and what Barack Obama can do to fight back without creating a clay berserker of his own.

Update: Samantha Power has resigned. More after the jump.

Without rehashing the whole thing, I reported on Karl Rove's strategy advice for Clinton yesterday, and explained that Rove's strategy was really to ensure a victory for John McCain, not Hillary Clinton. In the Golem legends, the only person who can vanquish the Golem is it's creator. This shouldn't be too hard, since every brick Hillary threw at Barack Obama this week is going to bounce up and smite Hillary in November.

First of all, on the subject of "Crossing the Commander-in-Chief Threshold", something Clinton says she and McCain have done, but Obama has not, what the @#%& is she talking about? None of these nominees can claim anything like experience at that role, which is the point. Despite the butched-up title, it is not and never has been a military position, nor is their anything approaching a civilian equivalent. I'm not sure what the argument here is. She even concedes the point to McCain in her remarks, saying she believes she has done it, but that McCain "certainly has." Finally, she doesn't even have the courage to put her attack fully into words, ending with the passive/agressive, "You'll have to ask Sen. Obama with respect to his candidacy."

Then, there's Wolfson, in response to Obama's call for Hillary to release her tax returns:

"I for one do not believe that imitating Ken Starr is the way to win a Democratic primary election for president," Wolfson said.

I'm sure he meant to evoke sympathy for poor, persecuted Hillary Clinton, but in doing so in the face of such a reasonable request, succeeded only in reminding people of the scandal-plagued Clinton years. Hillary herself made a similar error at the last debate, dropping an accurate comparison to the SNL sketch in the face of a pretty weak point about the media's bias against her.

What can Barack Obama do to fight back against this? Well, first, here's what not to do: Don't have yourself photographed in a tank, or goose-hunting, or drinking a domestic beer.

Really, the only advice I can offer Barack is to do what he does so well already: Agree with your opponents. Barack Obama is a master of what I call "Jack Ryan" politics. In the film "Clear and Present Danger", Harrison Ford's character give the President this advice about trying to distance himself from a sullied friend: "Don't say 'We were friends', say, 'We were lifelong friends.'" It's the best, and most ignored, political advice I've ever heard.

Barack needs to agree that McCain and Clinton are very similarly qualified, tie them together tightly, and then continue to stress the issue of judgment. He is very effective at neutralizing McCain by praising his bravery before decimating him on the judgment question. I would put, into my stump, a line like, "Hillary Clinton thinks John McCain would make a better President than she or I. While I honor his service, and respect his qualifications, I disagree." Then stress judgment on foreign policy like he has been doing.

What he must also do is resist the urge to respond in kind, something at which he has been very adept. Part of what makes Obama's candidacy so special is the way he has managed to stay above it all, with few exceptions. Even though many would say he was justified in doing so, he must not change that now. The Obama campaign has also been very good at drawing distinctions between substantive disagreements and "negative attacks."

If Obama can thread this needle, he stands a great chance against John McCain in November. It would be a lock if he had Hillary on the ticket, but that is looking less and less likely. Without her, he stands to lose a lot of women to McCain, who does well with that demographic. The answer there might be as simple as "Vice President Nancy Pelosi."

Finally, stop calling Hillary a "monster." Everyone knows, if you don't believe in monstersm they can't hurt you.

Update: Samantha Power resigned today, citing "deep regret" for her remarks, a good move and an easy one for an unpaid adviser. Why give your opponent any fuel for the fire?

Howard Wolfson was typically circumspect:

Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson noted that those involved in the Clinton campaign had been removed when they spoke of Obama's teenage drug use or helped spread the false rumor that the Illinois senator is a Muslim.

He defended his own comparison of Obama to independent prosecutor Kenneth Starr, saying he'd been responding to "attacks" from the Obama campaign regarding Clinton's tax returns and real estate transactions. That, he said, was a clear reference to Whitewater and so it was appropriate to bring up Starr in that context.

So, Howard Wolfson is basically saying that Muslims are drug-addicted monsters.

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