Bad reviews for Hillary's "fun"

This past weekend, Hillary announced her excitement about going negative on Obama.

Clinton said at a Cedar Rapids stop designed to encourage first-time caucusgoers to attend and vote for her, that she would spend the next month drawing more contrasts between her and her Democratic rivals.

"I have said for months that I would much rather be attacking Republicans and attacking the problems of our country, because ultimately, that's what I want to do as president, but I have been for months on the receiving act of consistent attacks," she said. "Now the fun part starts."

Well, everyone else has been fun ridiculing and criticizing Hillary's fun. For the woman who, as the boss of the vaunted Clinton attack and oppo research machine, she and her campaign seem to be really poor at attacking Barack Obama. In fact, the Obama team seems to be the ones having all the fun as they've set up a web site chronicling all of Hillary's attacks and all the criticism she has provoked. Andrew Romano at Newsweek's blog analyzes Hillary's own description of the joy she anticipates in attacking her opposition.

At a news conference Sunday in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, a reporter asked Clinton if Barack Obama has a "character problem." Her response, as reported by Pat Healy of the New York Times? "It’s beginning to look a lot like that," she said. "I have said for months that I would much rather be attacking Republicans and attacking problems of our country because ultimately that’s what I want to do as president. But I have been for months on the receiving end of rather consistent attacks – well now the fun part starts.” According to Healy, she "punctuat[ed] the word 'fun.'"

Say what? Politicos recognize that "attacking" opponents is a necessary part of the nomination process (even if voters, who typically inveigh against negativity while allowing it to color their perceptions of the candidates, don't always agree). But "fun"? Not so much. Whether a slip of the tongue or a revealing glimpse at Hillary's true colors, expressing joy, rather than resignation, at dissing a fellow Dem gave Obama a priceless opportunity to reinforce the caricature of Clinton as a conniving, calculating pol. "This presidential campaign isn't about attacking people for fun, it's about solving people's problems," Obama said in a statement. "Washington insiders might think throwing mud is fun, but the American people are looking for leadership that can unite this country." Somewhere, Obama staffers are scouring the Web for a clip of Clinton's comment. YouTube awaits.

While she's tried to draw differences between her health care program and his, the headlines this week were all about how her campaign sent out emails thinking that that had caught Obama in a gotcha moment by bringing up his Kindergarten essays. This was the dumbest move of the entire campaign on both sides. Oh, if only the TV writers weren't on strike. What fun they would have had with that story. I hope they're saving up stuff for when they come back. Time Magazine looks at how, besides being ridiculous, Hillary's new tactic is backfiring.

But at a time when two new Iowa polls show Obama actually pulling into the lead and Clinton losing support among women, some political observers are wondering if Clinton will come to regret her newly assertive strategy. She already has the highest negative ratings in the race, and the shift in tactics comes only a month before the Iowa caucus — where voters are famous for their distaste of negative campaigning. Launching the attacks herself, rather than with via surrogates, only makes the move even riskier.

"The attack will backfire in two ways: it will reinforce the negative stereotype of Mrs. Clinton as a cold and calculating person who will do whatever it takes to win," said Stephen J. Wayne, a government professor at Georgetown University and author of The Road to the White House. "And two, it will make Mr. Obama seem to be the less shrill and more emotionally mature candidate."

...Clinton's harsh new rhetoric has not won much support, either from pundits or other Democrats. "I could see the desire to raise the salience of personal traits — because her strengths are experience and strength of character," said Stephen Ansolabehere, a political science professor at MIT and author of the book Going Negative. "But her choice surprised me — she might be emphasizing the wrong thing. Given how close this is in the polls, especially a month out, this might be a very risky strategy for her."

"This series of slurs doesn't serve HRC well," said Robert Reich, former Labor Secretary under Bill Clinton, in a blog post. "It will turn off voters in Iowa, as in the rest of the country. If she's worried her polls are dropping, this is not the way to build them back up."

Perhaps the biggest downside to Clinton's negative attacks is that the press seems to be focusing on nothing else, at least for the moment. "What's tough about the stories from this weekend is that they're telegraphing — they're more about going negative than the substance of the attacks," Simmons said. "It underlines the case that Edwards and Obama have been making that she's practicing politics as usual." And for Clinton, that kind of an association could be the costliest negative of all.

Jay Cost thinks that the ineptness of her attacks show that she was never prepared to go negative on Obama.

You would expect the Clinton campaign to have something better than this. That's a sign to me that, for whatever reason, her campaign has been caught unawares. If they had planned to go negative on Obama - say, three or four months ago - they would have developed a better line of attack than what they currently have. Accordingly, that indicates that her campaign is, at least a little bit, off its planned script. It is improvising right now.

If it wants to attack effectively, it must find something better. Barack Obama is not just any old candidate. He's different - and the difference is what makes him such a tough target. He is the man many Democrats see when they imagine politics as it should be. He's the idealistic, post-partisan leader who can unite the country around a liberal vision of progress. Democrats might not think he can win this year - but they would be pleased if he could. This complicates matters for Clinton. It's one thing for her to be perceived as the battle-tested fighter who can fight off the Republicans. It is another thing altogether if she is perceived to be trying to destroy the candidate of the party's future.

I hate to disagree with Jay Cost, who I think is one of the most perceptive political observers out there, but I believe that the Clinton campaign has files ready to go on anyone who might emerge as a threat to her campaign. My husband and I were talking about how the Clinton folks could have made such a blunder as to have issued that email attacking the supposed preternatual ambition he demonstrated when he was five years old. My husband put his finger on what I bet happened. The oppo people in Hillary's campaign are so used to doing this sort of thing that they lost sight of how their attack would play out in the real world. I just bet that they have all these files of everything they've ever seen or heard by all of her opponents. When they heard his speech about how he wasn't driven by ambition, they called up some file labeled "Obama and ambition" and thought they had a great gotcha moment to show that he was also driven by ambition. And shot off the email. And there was no one in the room with the sense to say that any attack that had the word Kindergarten in it was probably a loser.