Day: February 24, 2008

Hillary Clinton is doing what second-place candidates in two-person races must do: swing hard. On Friday, she challenged Barack Obama on the truthfulness of a pair of campaign mailers that she says misstate her positions:

Clinton said Obama’s mailers, which have been circulating in some states since Super Tuesday, were “tactics that are right out of Karl Rove’s playbook…”

“Shame on you, Barack Obama,” Clinton said. “Meet me in Ohio. Let’s have a debate about your tactics.” The senators have been scheduled for a debate Tuesday in Cleveland.

She may be swinging hard on this issue because she is right. Nonpartisan Factcheck.org checked out the mailers and generally agrees with Clinton’s assessment:

• Trade: A mailer showing a locked plant gate quotes Clinton as saying she believed NAFTA was “a boon” to the economy. Those are not her words and Obama was wrong to put quote marks around them. In fact, she’s been described by a biographer as privately opposing NAFTA in the White House.
• Health Care: A second mailer said Clinton’s health care plan “forces everyone to buy insurance, even if you can’t afford it.” We have previously said that mailer “lacks context” and strains the facts. But both Obama and Clinton have been exaggerating their differences on this issue.

This raises the possibility that the Obama campaign is doing what frontrunners should never do: becoming over-confident and sloppy.

The St. Petersburg Times’ political writer, Adam Smith, launched the Charile Crist Veep-O-Meter and it’s leaning toward the tanned one. Smith gives a bunch of reasons why John McCain might choose the Florida governor as his running mate, but the most compelling one is money.

McCain’s Florida momentum in January paid off – literally. Not only did the Sunshine State and its governor help deliver him the nomination, but it pumped more than $1.28-million into his campaign, more than twice what McCain raised from Florida in the prior three months, and nearly a third of the $3.5-million he’s raised from Florida to date. The Center of Responsive Politics reports that Rudy Giuliani all told raised $5.4-million from Florida, and Mitt Romney $4.4-million.

Another factor in Charlie’s favor is that no one else seems to want the job. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson (R-Tex.) turned it down cold on ABC’s This Week, while Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R-Minn.) is unpopular in his home state. Gov. Mark Sanford (R-S.C.) still looks like a possibility.

Charlie is said to be able to deliver the Sunshine State to McCain, based on the governor’s own high approval ratings. Personally, I’m not feeling it. Crist is popular in Florida, yes, but in context. Democrats like me don’t see him doing anything terribly wrong, in stark contrast to his predecessor Jeb Bush, and we do see him falling on the right side of some battles, like trying to get insurance companies to act fairly and turning around untenable environmental policies.

But all that sure ain’t enough to make me vote Republican for president, and it way sure isn’t enough to make me vote for John McCain.