Can Obama Regain Lost Momentum?
After a night when he lost three out of four primaries to his rival, Sen. Hillary Clinton. Sen. Barack Obama tried to point to the relatively unchanged lead he had in the pledged-delegate count to show that his campaign is still on track.
But most experts believe that the Clinton campaign was able to throw Obama off stride the past couple of weeks because they hit him hard in two places - his lack of experience (The 3 a.m. ad, as it has become know, was particularly effective at this) and his credibility (undermined by the NAFTA-Canada memo). David Axlerod, Obama's chief adviser, calls it the "kitchen sink strategy."
Exits polls done in both Texas and Ohio show that among voters who made up their minds in the past few days about their vote they overwhelmingly went to Clinton. She was also able to recapture voters from groups that had deserted her in earlier primaries and caucuses.
As NPR's Don Gonyea points out, the Obama campaign is aware that its momentum has been stalled -- if not stopped -- and that the Clinton team will be coming at Obama hard again. "They know it's going to be a difficult seven weeks [until Pennsylvania] ," says Gonyea.
The Washington Post's 'The Trail' blog reports that Obama may be willing to get more aggressive in response to the Clinton victories.. Wednesday morning he used a tactic Clinton has used so well against him - he challenged the media and others to look more closely at Clinton's claims that she has the kind of experience that would make her "ready on day one."
"I think it's important to examine that claim and not just allow her to assert it," said Onbama. "She's made the argument that she's thoroughly better in contrast to me, I think its important to examine that argument."
Update: During a conference call today Obama's chief strategist David Axelrod made it clear that it's going to get a bit rougher the next few weeks, telling the reporters on the call "What's good for the goose is good for the gander."
"There's no doubt we have held ourselves to a standard of engagement. I don't think the public is looking for the candidates to savage each other...but you can't play by two sets of rules, and we understand that."
"Let's let there be a vetting, but the vetting is going to be on both candidates," Axelrod said. "She doesn't want to release her tax returns, okay, fine. She says she's a master at foreign policy. She's a master at health care. What happened? Why was it such an abysmal failure? Why did we have to wait 14 more years?"
12:44 PM ET | 03- 5-2008 | permalink
