Barack promises to ruffle Hillary's feathers

An article in The New York Times by Adam Nagourney and Jeff Zeleny entitled "Obama Promises a Forceful Stand Against Clinton" informs us that Barack will be trying to get Mrs. Clinton to work a little harder to maintain her lead over the rest of the Democratic presidential pack. I wish him luck. Seriously, Hillary does need to be toughened up a bit to prevail in the general election next year. And I am sure that ruffling her feathers will cheer his supporters and help him raise donations. But, in the final analysis, going "confrontational" will at best solidify his existing support but do very little to endear him to voters who weren't already Obama cheerleaders. Besides, Hillary can out-confront anybody. All she needs to do is maintain her composure and calmly dismiss any "confrontation" that anybody else misguidedly throws her way.

My free advice to Barack is that he should focus on really distinguishing himself from Hillary, not via "confrontation", but by telling us things about himself and his ideas that really would make him a better candidate in the general election (and the presidency) than Mrs. Clinton. I just visited his web site and I honestly couldn't find anything to set him head and shoulders above Hillary. Seriously. Sure, he is a little more liberal and anti-war, but none of that will help in the general election. The problem for Barack is that Hillary really is 100% committed to being the winner in the general election, and he is not willing to compromise to get there himself.

Nonetheless, we all look forward to his efforts to push Hillary to a whole new level of performance.

-- Jack Krupansky