Experience 101
If Obama can't handle Hillary,
can he handle McCain/Rove?

Obama Better Battle Back Before It's Too Late

The battle of Hillary is over. The battle of Obama has begun.

The question of his readiness and experience looms ever larger in the minds of the media and of voters.

Her red-phone ad, citing her supposedly superior readiness to be commander in chief, evidently cut deeply among the electorate.

It’s time that Obama counters her strategy by hitting back. His lofty politics of hope will avail him little in the aggressive, rough-and-tumble world of modern politics.

He’s got to spell out the special-interest connections that stigmatize Hillary as the tool of the lobbyists.

He must underscore the need for her to release her tax returns for 2007 and 2006 to show the source of her new-found wealth.

He’s got to learn to trade blows with the Clintons, the best counter-punchers in the business.

- Dick Morris

Headlines to this effect keep popping up everywhere - from his supporters and his detractors. Dick Morris is certainly no supporter - he backs McCain.

A question being asked over and over recently is this - Is Obama really tough enough? If he can't handle Hillary, how will he handle John McCain and Karl Rove? How will he handle North Korea, China, Iraq and Iran?

Hope and a faith in the basic goodness of humanity is nice - but, still, John Kennedy had the courage to stand up to the Soviets and even his own CIA over Cuba and Berlin. He had the courage to stand up against the steel industry over its higher prices and collusion.

If all Obama is going to do is grin like he's on the cover of Mad "What, Me Worry?" Magazine, he'll get shafted by Hillary and screwed by McCain and he'll go back to being just another Senator from Illinois.

He needs to fight back. He needs to expose Hillary Clinton's weaknesses - and she has plenty.

She wants to talk about Rezko? He needs to talk about Frank Giustra, Peter Pal, Stan Lee, Ron Burkle, Jim Levin, Aaron Tonken, Vin Gupta, Stanley Myatt, Norman Hsu, Johnny Chung ... and the beat goes on.

He needs to talk even more about where she gets her money, about her tax returns, her earmark bills, the donors to the CLinton Library (all top secret, of course).

No general ever won a battle without firing the ammunition at his disposal.

Barack Obama, you may be anti-war, but in taking on Hillary Clinton, and possibly John McCain/Karl Rove in November, you'd better realize - this IS war. With Hillary, it's always war.

Now it's Obama's turn to make adjustments

Ask any boxing trainer and they'll tell you that you can walk into the ring with a well-designed plan to beat your opponent, but as the fight progresses, you might have to alter your plans.

... jump right in her face on the foreign policy front. She claims she was integrally involved in the release of Kosovo refugees and the Irish peace talks. Fine. So demand to know why if she was so involved in foreign policy, the Clinton administration failed in Rwanda and had a horrible plan on Somalia? There were clear international failures during the eight years of President Bill Clinton, and she needs to be forced to say what she did and didn't do. Obama has used the cherry picking argument, but has been weak in selling it. Nail it to try to nail her.

"Now it's Obama's turn to make adjustments", Roland S. Martin, CNN