Clinton Sailing Happily on Sinking Ship

By Jeremy Barr

This morning, the Clinton campaign came out with their most ridiculous line of reasoning yet. The campaign released a memo saying that Barack Obama should sweep the March 4^th primary states (Ohio, Texas, Rhode Island, Vermont), and if he doesn’t, “there’s a problem.” Thus the Clinton team has begun their next, and perhaps last, political strategy: raising expectations for their rival campaign to unreachable heights.

Although Obama holds a lead in the polls in Texas and Vermont, Ohio will be much tougher for the Senator. One should remember that Clinton held huge leads in states like Texas and Wisconsin (which recently went for Obama by 17%) until recently, and the fact that Obama is within 10 points in Ohio, a state which matches up very well for the Clintons, is a testament to the strength of his campaign.

Among those not versed in Machiavellian politics (“The Prince” has seemingly become the Clinton campaign handbook), the expectation is that a campaign would want to hype up and predict their own success while subsequently lowering expectations for a rival. But in the case of the Clinton campaign, they have become so confident in the ability of their rival candidate, Senator Barack Obama, that they have begun to set “expectations” so high that even he might not be able to reach them.

It’s a pathetic strategy, and it shows just how desperate the Clinton campaign has become. For historical purposes, I was a Clinton supporter as recently as one month ago. I felt that she had the domestic and international experience to change our foreign policy for the better, and to restore our status in the world. While Senator Obama has certainly won me over since then, Hillary Clinton has done everything she possibly can to lose my support.