RATTLED

Samantha Power a senior foreign policy advisor to Barack Obama has quit after putting her foot in her mouth and calling Senator Clinton "a monster." Power thought she was speaking off the record to the Scotsman but apparently journos in the land of haggis, single malt and tartan noir have different opinions as to what's off the record.

The *real* significance of this episode is it shows that Obamaites may not be ready for prime time. I'm not the only person who wonders if the Obama camp can collectively take a punch, so does Josh Marshall: "The Clinton campaign has gotten so deep inside the Obama campaign's collective head it just ain't funny -- or, depending on your political persuasion, it's very funny.

Late Tuesday night I wrote that the upshot of the March 4th contests was that Clinton had beaten Obama up a bit and he hadn't responded. She'd not only bloodied up his poll numbers a bit by throwing all sorts of stuff at him. She also showed that it wasn't at all clear that Obama was enough of a fighter to stand up to this stuff or get back in her face. More than the delegate numbers, that was the challenge March 4th had left him with. <SNIP>

The Obama folks can either withdraw to a world where the 'new politics' reigns or focus on the fact that here in the real world there are two 'old politics' practitioners standing between him and the presidency and he needs to decide how he's going to deal with that fact."

The Obamaites should have resisted calls for Power's resignation instead of caving so quickly and meekly: an apology should have sufficed. If they don't toughen up soon, Maureen Dowd will revive her former nickname for the junior Senator from Illinois, Obambi. The Obama camp is clearly rattled:

tags: politics  2008  election  obama  clinton  

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