Clinton Will Close On Electability, Readies Contrast Ads ObamaInexperience and Unelectability it is.
The Clinton campaign has settled on its final argument against Barack Obama, and is using two new national polls to kick start an aggressive campaign in the national media designed to raise questions about his competence and experience.In a variety of conference calls over the next few days, in surrogate appearances, and in memos distributed to reporters, the campaign will directly challenge Obama on points of his resume, on past statements of his, on the details of his current policy plans, and on his campaign's pushback that it is Clinton who is not electable.
The approach carries risk. Polls show that Clinton is judged to be running the most negative campaign of all the Democrats, and if voters come to perceive her campaign as being in attack mode, her own favorability ratings could suffer.
With 23 days to go, Clinton needs to move now. Already, some advisers to Bill Clinton are speaking to reporters in hushed tones about what they see as strategic miscues by the current Hillary Clinton leadership team.
Bill Clinton himself is "concerned," one adviser said, but knows that his wife has complete confidence in her choices. And, truth be told, none of the mistakes that have hurt Clinton in Iowa have had anything to do with senior management. Much of Barack Obama's recent success is attributable to Obama himself and his campaign's formidable Iowa field organization, which was developed by state director Paul Tewes. The Obama campaign regularly attracts more than 70 Iowans to its mock caucuses, a figure suggesting that Obama's support is wide and deep.
Of most concern to Clinton's team is the notion that her support has topped out in Iowa and that few undecided Iowans will break her way. That's led them to recalibrate the way they describe her path to the nomination to reporters. Right now, the campaign emphasizes her strength in New Hampshire and its penchant for judging candidates independently of Iowa. (No word on yet on what the Clinton campaign thinks of the new WMUR/CNN poll.)
http://marcambinder.theatlantic.com/archives/2007/12/clinton_will_close_on_electabi_1.php
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