The Homa Files

Holy alibi, Batman.

Circle October 24, 2012 on your calendars.

It’s the day that the NY Times posted to the official record “How Bill Clinton May Have Hurt the Obama Campaign”:

… there is one crucial way in which the 42nd president (Clinton) may not have served the 44th (Obama) quite as well.

In these final weeks before the election, Mr. Clinton’s expert advice about how to beat Mitt Romney is starting to look suspect.

…  just after Mr. Romney locked up the Republican nomination, Mr. Obama’s team abruptly switched its strategy for how to define him.

Up to then, the White House had been portraying Mr. Romney … as inauthentic and inconstant, a soulless climber who would say anything to get the job.

But it was Mr. Clinton who forcefully argued to Mr. Obama’s aides that the campaign had it wrong.

The best way to go after Mr. Romney, the former president said, was to publicly grant that he was the “severe conservative” he claimed to be, and then hang that unpopular ideology around his neck.

Ever since, the Obama campaign has been hammering Mr. Romney as too conservative, while essentially giving him a pass for having traveled a tortured path on issues like health care reform, abortion and gay rights.

It’s not hard to understand why Mr. Obama and his advisers took Mr. Clinton’s advice to heart; to disregard it would be like telling Derek Jeter, “Hey man, appreciate the input, but I think I know how to make that flip play from the hole just fine on my own.”

For a while this summer and into the fall, the Obama-Clinton strategy seemed to be working flawlessly.

But in recent weeks, starting with the first debate, the challenger has made a brazen and frantic dash to the center, and Mr. Obama has often seemed off-balance, as if stunned that Mr. Romney thinks he can get away with such an obvious change of course so late in the race.

Which, apparently, he can.

Couple of questions:

1. Wasn’t it Bill Clinton who stole the show at the DNC and gave Obama’s campaign some oomph?

2. Wasn’t that Bill Clinton (with Springsteen) revving up the crowds in Ohio?

3. Didn’t Hillary just fall on her sword to protect Obama in the Benghazi mess?

4. Isn’t it a bit early to start pinning the blame for a loss?

Of course, I’m hoping that the Times knows something that I don’t … and the election is a fait accompli.

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This entry was posted on October 25, 2012 at 12:30 pm and is filed under 2012 Campaign, Obama. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.