There's nothing quite like using the front page of the Sunday New York Times to make a point -- in the case of Barack Obama, it's a forum to lob a few rhetorical salvos against the fortress of Dem rival Hillary Clinton. In the lengthy Times inside baseball peek into the campaign, Obama and his campaign said they were stepping into the ring with a new set of gloves, with Obama attempting to sharpen his differences with Clinton. Of course he wasn't trying, Obama quipped, to “kneecap the front-runner, because I don’t think that’s what the country is looking for," but if not a knee cap, then it's certainly a punch.
In what might be called the campaign's Soprano's awakening, the Obama folks have decided it's time to stop letting Clinton get away with being the experience/change candidate without taking a look at what Obama called Clinton's "agenda" and her being less than forthcoming, if not exactly truthful about her political calculations and policies.
Here's an excerpt (read complete article here):
“I don’t think people know what her agenda exactly is,” Mr. Obama continued, citing Social Security, Iraq and Iran as issues on which he said she had not been fully forthcoming. “Now it’s been very deft politically, but one of the things that I firmly believe is that we’ve got to be clear with the American people right now about the important choices that we’re going to need to make in order to get a mandate for change, not to try to obfuscate and avoid being a target in the general election and then find yourself governing without any support for any bold propositions.”
In one sense, there's nothing new here because Obama has always offered himself as the 'big bang' leader and said all along I'm not your guy if you want a potential more of the same D.C. presidency. What's different and perhaps inevitable from the early days of the campaign is that it he's showing some campaign fire in the belly and not let the Clinton steal some of his 'hope and bold' thunder and get bullied around. You can bet the Clinton's are firing back with all their ammo and reminding everyone that Mr. 'Hope' is as calcualting as any other politician (in fact, one of the Clinton campaign tricks of the trade is to relentlessly remind reporters that Obama isn't all that special or different than say, Hillary Clinton).
It's worth noting that John Edwards has been pounding the pulpit about Clinton for months and now he has a partner of sorts to redefine the bulleye on Hillary's back -- who has also become a convenient target for Republicans like Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani and John McCain (McCain in a particular has released a raw ad against Clinton, sort of round 522 of the 60s Culture Wars by portraying her as Sen. Woodstcok while he was "tied up" in Vietnam.)
It's a good sign for the Dems because the last thing they need is a potential coronation. They need a political street brawl to decide what they want to be and who they want to represent.
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