Sometimes in slip ups, the truth comes out

This is is priceless (emphasis added):

As Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton prepares for an afternoon news conference here in Washington, where she is to be surrounded by “military officers” her campaign has put up a YouTube moment that you can bet will be replayed over and over.

In it, Susan Rice, a foreign policy adviser to Senator Barack Obama, discusses the foreign policy credentials of both Democrats against the tableau of Mrs. Clinton’s 3 a.m. phone call advertisement about who would be best prepared for an international crisis. (While your children are safely asleep.)

“Clinton hasn’t had to answer the phone at three o’clock in the morning and yet she attacked Barack Obama for not being ready,” Ms. Rice said. “They’re both not ready to have that 3 a.m. phone call.”

Probably the most honest thing asserted from either campaign to date ;)

Watch the video here.

The two campaigns are now battling it out over who is being more secretive – Obama for not answering Rezko questions, or Hillary for failing to release her tax returns. It’s gotten so bad that now that Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson is comparing BO to Ken Starr – which under normal circumstances would be a compliment, but Ken Starr is an evil man to the Democratic party because of how he aggressively went after Bubba, so the assertion wasn’t meant to be complimentary:

Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson, taking the campaign a bit meta on a conference call today, attacked Obama for attacking Clinton, and compared him to a notorious Clinton foe.

“When Senator Obama was confronted with questions over whether he was ready to be Commander-in-Chief and steward of the economy, he chose not to address those questions, but to attack Senator Clinton,” Wolfson said. “I for one do not believe that imitating Ken Starr is the way to win a Democratic primary election for president.”

Wolfson was attacking Obama’s explicit strategy, in the wake of his March 4 losses, to attack elements of Clinton’s record on the grounds of secrecy, and to revisit the questions raised by Clinton foes in the 1990s and earlier.

I think it’s interesting to see major news outlets like the NYT report that Obama is now coming out “punching” in light of the Clinton campaign’s aggressive campaigning against him, which some are arguing was the difference-maker in Tuesday’s primaries, which they say may tarnish his image as a man of “hope” and “unity”:

If he indulges his inner Chicago pol, formed in a city where politics is conducted with crowbars, he risks taking the shine off. But his advisers say he has little choice.

Well, at least they acknowledged where his political roots are, in a city known for its knockdown dragout political fights and rampant corruption. What they won’t admit is that Obama has already been “punching” in his campaign, most notably when he had his surrogates play the race card against Hillary and Bill Clinton prior to the SC primary, a successful effort that I believe has hurt the Clinton campaign with black voters. I think BO would still have gotten the vast majority of their votes anyway, but let’s say Hillary averages 8% of the black vote in primaries. Even chopping off 5% with those racial allegations can hurt – and not just with the black community. BO knows how to play the game just as well as anyone, but don’t let the media fool you – this isn’t the first time he’s come out swinging against Senator Clinton and it won’t be the last. This is the nature of politics (for better or for worse). In this case, criticism is justifiable about her tax records, but the race card throwing that happened in January by the Obama campaign was not.

I also find it mildly amusing to see liberal bloggers complaining about the “long term effects” of Hillary’s “kitchen sink” strategy against BO. This demonstrates how BO has been able to set the tone of what Democrats believe should be the focus of the campaign: BO has said the candidates shouldn’t “go negative” but the term “go negative” is defined by the Obama campaign as a critical examination of his thin resume, and pointing out problems with it. There’s nothing wrong in “going negative” in this regard. It’s really easy for a candidate to make promises “for the future” but many of them get into trouble when people start learning about their political history, which includes their voting record and people with whom they have associated. It’s understandable BO only wants to focus on “tomorrow” because “yesterday” for him is his lack of experience, his “present” votes in the Ill. state senate, and his ties to Tony Rezko, among other things. The people have a right to know not just what a candidate promises to do, but what he has done, and how he’s done it – and if he’s done it.

And lastly, even though he just missed out on being the Savior of the World for reversing the effects of ‘global warming,’ The Goracle might be the only one who can stop the Dem party “meltdown,” so argues Charles Hurt in today’s NY Post.

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