Wednesday, March 05, 2008

Prediction Fulfilled: More Attacks from Clinton


I thought I had it right when I wrote last night (or early this morning) that Hillary Clinton would continue her negative attacks on Obama because they had been effective in Ohio and Texas. I just didn't know I'd be proven correct so quickly.

As the YouTube shows, on March 3, Sen. Clinton said that "Sen. McCain has a lifetime of experience, I have a lifetime of experience, Sen. Obama has one speech in 2002", incredibly allying herself with Sen. McCain against Sen. Obama. According to James Fallows, she has already repeated this statement twice more on CNN today.

Meanwhile, despite last night's setbacks, the Obama campaign is hanging tough and preparing to slog it out. Here is a section from a fundraising email from David Plouffe, Obama's campaign manager:

Our projections show the most likely outcome of yesterday's elections will be that Hillary Clinton gained 187 delegates, and we gained 183.

That's a net gain of 4 delegates out of more than 370 delegates available from all the states that voted.

For comparison, that's less than half our net gain of 9 delegates from the District of Columbia alone. It's also less than our net gain of 8 from Nebraska, or 12 from Washington State. And it's considerably less than our net gain of 33 delegates from Georgia.

The task for the Clinton campaign yesterday was clear. In order to have a plausible path to the nomination, they needed to score huge delegate victories and cut into our lead.

They failed.

It's clear, though, that Senator Clinton wants to continue an increasingly desperate, increasingly negative -- and increasingly expensive -- campaign to tear us down.

That's her decision. But it's not stopping John McCain, who clinched the Republican nomination last night, from going on the offensive. He's already made news attacking Barack, and that will only become more frequent in the coming days.