If she loses it, we saw some of the reason why today.
No one ever accused her of not being "scary-smart." Yet although lucidly intelligent, Clinton didn't offer so much as a crumb for anyone already inclined to support Obama. Her hardball approach with Tim Russert consisted of: 1) talking up her "experience" over "inexperience" message; and 2) fuzzing up, in a very smooth, meta-lawyer-like way, the distinctions between her support for the war and Obama's opposition to it.
Oh, and her extended laugh after Russert's "vast right-wing conspiracy" question seemed utterly contrived, perhaps another attempt to convey emotion.
Although I predicted this past week that she'll be the nominee, no less a long time observer than John McLaughlin is calling the Democratic race too close to call. And while Hillary locked up a lot of early Dem establishment support (including from RI Dems, from Cicilline to Whitehouse), a growing number of Dems, including former Clintonistas, are going for Obama.
Frank Rich isn't so sure about Hillary, either:
Voice is not merely a matter of presenting a softer persona, speaking eloquently, looking authentic on television, cracking jokes or shedding tears — worthwhile attributes for any candidate, including Mr. Obama. Voice is also about content, and in this election, content may yet be king. Though gender, race, age and likability are all factors, the fundamentals of what the public is looking for in the presidential marketplace remains more stable than our economy week after week.
As Mrs. Clinton would say, let’s have a reality check. The exit poll of those who voted on Tuesday — not to be confused with the pre-primary polls that misfired — showed that Democrats are still looking for change (54 percent) over experience (19 percent) and that they overwhelmingly associate Mr. Obama with the former and Mrs. Clinton with the latter. By change, they don’t mean merely a tuneup. As the Wall Street Journal-NBC News survey of both Democrats and Republicans found last month, the percentage of voters who favor “small adjustments” in America (24) or “moderate corrections” (29) is swamped by the 46 percent who seek “major reforms” and a “brand-new” approach.
In Tuesday’s exit polling, half of Republican voters said even they’d had enough of President Bush. That’s why “change” the word, if not the deed, keeps proliferating in both parties like kudzu. In last weekend’s twin ABC debates, Mr. Obama’s 14 invocations of “change” or “changes” were surpassed by Mrs. Clinton’s 25 and nearly matched by Mitt Romney’s 10.
The question for the two top Democrats, whose specific positions on most issues vary only by increments, is who can best convince the country that they can deliver that change. Mr. Obama’s powerful speeches alone can’t accomplish that, and neither can Mrs. Clinton’s born-again vow to make her emotions and campaign appearances more accessible to voters and the press.
In the nightmare scenario for their party, they could both fail or take each other out or self-destruct, inducing the public to settle for a Republican who can somehow persuade voters that he’s the change agent by default. It behooves Democrats to notice that Mr. McCain’s brand as a straight-talking rebel is so strong that even those voters in the New Hampshire G.O.P. primary who don’t like Mr. Bush or the Iraq war gave him most of their votes despite his outspoken support of both.
However unpredictable the race as a whole may be, the vision thing still seems central to the Democrats’ change sweepstakes. Whether you regard it as inspirational or pablum, Mr. Obama’s vision has been consistent since the 2004 convention speech that introduced him to the country well before his presidential candidacy: a hopeful reconciliation of red and blue Americans joined in a united effort to address and heal the domestic and international cancers that have metastasized during the bitter partisanship of the Bush-Rove years.
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