What cave has this guy been living in for the past two months that he thinks Clinton finally needs to give up her positive campaign and attack Obama?

William Tecumseh Sherman was, of course, a notable proponent of "scorched earth" tactics. However, as a general in the Union Army, I suspect that his tactics would have been somewhat less successful if instead of applying them in Georgia he had laid to waste, say, New York.

"Or possibly they'll draft Al Gore." Something I think has never crossed Hill's mind. Maybe Hillary's goal is not to make Obama unelectable in the fall, but to destroy him now so as to win the rest of the contests handily. If she drives down her numbers in the general, that won't matter because what matters now is now, and to get to the general she has to take care of now. After she guts Obama then she can turn around and gut McCain. It doesn't matter if she is the second most hated person in America, as long as her immediate opponent is the most hated.

I saw Shoen's op-ed this morning and immediately thought that this was the same argument as Jonathan Chait's with a "positive" spin:  Chait:  "The only way to win is to tear him down, which probably won't work and is bad for the party, so don't do it".  Shoen:  "The only way to win is to tear him down right now, so do it!".   Absent in Shoen's argument was a coherent or believable argument making the case that it was _good_ for the Democratic party.  This post highlights futher proof to the contrary. Nice.

From Politico:

--

In fact, the Democratic race has not been especially rough by historical standards. What’s more, our conversations with Democrats who speak to the Clintons make plain that their public comments are only the palest version of what they really believe: that if Obama is the nominee, a likely Democratic victory would turn to a near-certain defeat.

Far from a no-holds-barred affair, the Democratic contest has been an exercise in self-censorship.

--

Scorched earth was Bush-McCain 2000. Scorched earth was Bush-Kerry 2004. This is intramural flag football by comparison.

Jonathan,

You are missing the point. Obama and his surrogates in the media branded Clinton as negative monster, racist and so on  already. However her "attacks" were very mild compare to Obama attacks.

Obama supporters are not going to hate her more. It's not possible. So she as well might return Obama smear with real attacks.

I would have to disagree that this has been a mild race.  Clinton has been using all the basic republican tactics unashamedly.  The tone of the race has coarsened and it has reached the normal trivial level of discourse that the Republicans excel at.  Not to mention all the efforts to change and disparage the rules of the game by the Clintons (Michigan and Florida, caucus not counting etc.) .  The truth is that Obama is not as easy a mark as a lot of other democratic politcians and the attacks are not sticking the way they did with Kerry and Gore.  It's heartening to see that a backlash may be occuring.

ligedog1,

"I would have to disagree that this has been a mild race.  Clinton has been using all the basic republican tactics unashamedly"

I guess, for you "As far as I know" was a Scorched-Earth Tactics.

BTW, What About Obama? Did he ever use any of  basic republican tactics unashamedly or shamedly ?

Or he was just telling the truth that Clinton is dishonest bitch?

jacobtl -

Obama has not tried to make Clintons misstatments the core of his campaign or tried to change the rules of the primaries to suit his needs. The Clintons tactics go a little beyond the "As far as I know" remark.   When did Obama call Hillary a "dishonest bitch"?  

jacob; In the new poll, 54 percent said they have an unfavorable view of Sen. Clinton, up from 40 percent a few days after she won the New Hampshire primary in early January.

This means nothing to you? If you were to start pitching a Gore rescue, that I can understand, but why defend the most hated woman in America?

ligedog1. Um....that was me. jacob got Obama mixed up with me. Happens all the time. I will say it again. Hillary is a dishonest bitch. A big fat lying bitch. A bitch bitch bitch bitch bitch.

Hope that clears things up for you.

This notion is based on a faulty premise -- that there are some set of tactics, positions, attacks, etc. that could given any candidate victory starting from any point in the campaign so long as it is not literally over.  Not even close.  In every race, there are at best a limited number of opportunities to exploit and those may or may not be sufficient to change the outcome.  Politics is a lot of small ball played out against the background of an over-arching theme -- built for speed, pitching, offense, whatever.

The choice of the strategic "theme," just like the choice of the roster, is made before the season starts and is a bet.  If you choose wrong, you will lose.  Then, based on the theme, a campaign has to deploy tactics that are as effective as possible in each contest.  If the underlying demographics make it close enough, then better tactics than the opponent may lead to victory.  Skill counts.

At this date, a scorched earth campaign, indeed any sort of new campaign strategy or tactics, cannot work for Hillary.  It is simply too late.  Almost any change of theme from "I am tested, vetted, blah, blah .  .  . " will be negative for Hillary.  That is the narrative she has chosen.  If she tries to choose a new theme at this juncture -- "scourge from hell" let's say -- it can only hurt her by undermining the basic support for her campaign.  Her only hope for a long time has been successfully to reinforce her core message of her own preparedness.  It happens to be a really lousy narrative to campaign on because the voters want the election to be about them, not about the candidate.  But that is beside the point.  Once the basic narrative has been laid down, you have to reinforce it in the hope that it becomes THE narrative.  Among other things that have bedeviled Hillary, the fact that Obama's "change" narrative trumped her competence narrative is high on the list.  The need to reinforce the core narrative is what led Hillary into the Tuzla debacle.  She had become desperate to distinguish hers own presumed competence and completely lost track of reality in the process.

From a tactical point of view, the scorched earth campaign would have had to begin in earnest quite a while ago.  And, it was never really available for the very reasons that Chiat cites.  In order to make Obama unelectable, Hillary would have to make herself unelectable and a pariah in the Democratic party.  It is just foolish to assume that this EVER existed as a realistic opportunity.  Something subtler might have worked -- more of a drip of commentary undermining Obama rather than a full-blown scorched earth campaign.  This is in fact what Hillary tried to do.  But Obama was successful in countering because he is simply better than she is rhetorically and hard to dislike.  In the end, she succeeded neither in make her competence narrative the dominant narrative of the campaign nor in undermining Obama.

I don't know that Hillary could ever have won the nomination against Obama.  But to do so she would have had to have chosen a very different narrative a long time ago and carefully counted up the delegates that she was going to win in order to claim the nomination.   By the time Obama really got going, she had already committed herself in almost every important manner.  When he "solved" the strategic problem of how to beat her, it was already too late.  And skill matters.  She has but a fraction of his rhetorical and political skills.  He connects with people in a multitude of ways that she cannot.  

This is illustrative of the fact that sometimes it is better to be late to the game, after the dominant contender has already committed.  To use another competitive analogy, Obama played a "back game" (as in backgammon).  

I would only add that the error that Chiat makes, of assuming that there exist SOME set of tactics for Hillary is the same mistake constantly made here by jacobt1 and others who say that "Obama cannot close the deal."  This assumes that some sort of behavior or characteristics of the candidate could dramatically change any race starting from any point in time.  That is just not the case.  Obama has craftily exploited the opportunities that presented themselves.  Hence he is securely in the lead.  It is no knock on either Obama or Hillary that, at this late date, neither one can significantly change the game.