BY TAYLOR MARSH
from Washington, D.C.
 |
Tim Russert calls it “serene.” Nice try. It’s called fatigue. Some
say he’s “bored.” Honestly, he shouldn’t be, because this is not over.
Read Todd Beeton.
And it will take a lot more than Obama taking off his jacket and rolling up
his sleeves to get the job done, because he simply has not been able to close the deal. Sure,
Democratic primary voters may turn their heads. But in the general election
there is something Clinton has that Obama has yet to show.
Clinton may not like the story, but her supporters love it: The sheet metal
workers union official in Portage, Indiana cited by Bayh had praised her “testicular
fortitude” before lighting into unnamed “Gucci wearing, latte-drinking”
opponents.Also last week, a New York Post columnist wrote that she’d won the “cojones
primary.”And James Carville, the Clintons’ ubiquitous former aide, booster, and informal
adviser made the point even more vividly, giving Clinton a two-gonad edge
on her primary rival, Senator Barack Obama. “If she gave him one of her
cojones, they’d both have two,” Carville said.The ballsy fighter is the newest persona for a woman whom public life has
taken from a liberal policy wonk to a devoted wife, from a wronged woman to
a cerebral senator. …
Obama and his team have run a formidable campaign. But since February, the
wind has gone out of Obama’s high flying balloon. Lately, it’s come close to
crashing. Take Obama’s appearance on “Meet the Press” this past Sunday.
I almost fell asleep watching him. No passion. No energy. No fight. Just a begrudging
performance that seemed to reveal exactly what Michelle Obama said this past
weekend: “I can’t let my ego, my anger, my frustration get in the way
of the ultimate goal.”
But in the end it’s a matter of cojo—… heart.
One place this also shows up is in the reality of Florida and Michigan. In
spite of Ed Schultz’s ugly filibustering on every show in which he appears,
like last night’s pathetic performance on CNN where the blow hard wouldn’t let
anyone get a word in edge wise, it’s Obama who stopped the revote. Ed’s ego
knows no bounds. Someone needs to tell him that TV isn’t radio, so look like your head’s going to explode turns people off. Like when yelling at telling Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz that he
knew better what was happening in her own state than she did. Ed is wrong but to his Neanderthal mind that doesn’t matter. He’ll put his swagger where his mouth is. Truth is that the money was
there for a Florida revote, but Obama and his team blinked, went scared, blocked
it, even as Obama ran ads, which were against the rules, but Clinton didn’t. In Michigan, where Obama chose to take his name
off of the ballot, his team hoped Hillary would pay for staying on it through Iowa and New Hampshire.
In contrast, Hillary was ready to do it again, take him on, let the people
revote, even though she won both states the first time around fair and square.
Nothing scares Clinton. It’s a storyline that sticks. Her courage, tenacity,
and willingness to fight it out has exhausted her opponent and made his supporters whine about her her relentless presence, drive, and sense of purpose.
It’s why today Obama’s finds himself confronting Clinton, who has remade herself
and the image of any woman candidate into a ballsy fighter who won’t give up
until the last vote is logged in and the last ballot counted. That includes
Michigan and Florida, which Obama better realize, because without counting these
two states, it simply will not be over.
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