He Said She Said

By Paul Peete

All Rights Reserved

Boy we finally have a contest in the Democratic Presidential race. Barack and Hillary are letting it rip after they had differing opinions of the rightness of talking to despots if elected. Barack gave Hillary the opening by answering without hesitation yes to a question posed by a citizen as to whether he would meet with the leaders of N. Korea, Cuba, Venezuela and Iran in his first year in office. She said that the Presidency is too prestigious an office to allow despots to use it as a propaganda opportunity. She scored one for the experience argument by seeming more cognizant of the protocol of the office, but she went too far the next day when she said it showed his naiveté. That freed Obama to attack her as naïve to vote to authorize Bush to attack Iraq on the premise that he would try diplomacy first. And he is free to operate with the gloves off now. He can say that he tried to stay above the fray but he can’t run away from a bully even if she is a woman trying to act like a man.

The old saying is that you can’t un-ring a bell! Well the bell for round one has rung and both Obama and Clinton are going at it like heavyweight contenders. A little he said she said is what this Democratic contest needed. So Hillary is trying to paint Barack as a rookie politician and Barack is going at her as a Bush-lite member of a political establishment that has run this country to the state we find ourselves in now. Barack is stressing the new direction he would take the country in. He even is characterizing himself as strong enough to have no fear of talking to anyone and smart enough to stand up to any attempts at upstaging American interests. But there is a wild card in this deck who goes by the name of Bill. America knows that Bill was able to stand on the world stage with anyone and come across as the leader of the free world.

What Barack has to do is paint Hillary as the wife of a great leader who was treated like a princess during her years as first lady and a Senator for just one term before he was elected. He must somehow feminize her role as first lady without trying to seem sexist, which would invite a racist perception of him to creep in. Hillary has to continue to act like the nomination is already hers and that Obama and Edwards are duking it out for the possible vice presidents job. John Edwards has to somehow get in this fight as something other than the referee and find a way to throw punches at the two of them and hope he can land a sucker punch while they aren’t focused on him. His populist theme has yet to make a dent in the frontrunners lead. Even his admission of making the mistake on the vote to authorize the war did little to force a similar concession from Hillary.

Edwards’s wife has been trying to engage Hillary in the femininity argument but she better be careful that she doesn’t make John Edwards look more feminine than Hillary. Having just gotten away from being pasted with the hair bit, the YOU Tube video of John combing his hair to “I’m so pretty” gave an interesting assent to Ann Coulter’s fag reference and John’s soft nature runs against the grain of America’s macho GI Joe image of its leaders. Remember the “who would you prefer to have a beer with” that Bush swaggered in on over a true war hero turned thinker!

So Obama gets to show a toughness now without seeming like the angry black man America so fears. And Hillary is stuck now having to face again an issue that was pushed to the background in recent weeks as she appeared well on her way to cinching the nomination. Edwards has to look tougher and get the blood boiling in the Democrats for a change. Carrying his home state in the early primary is a must for him, perhaps the only hope for him.