I think Hillary Clinton is sounding a little desperate these days.
She's been the frontrunner in the race for the Democrat nomination for president for quite awhile now, but her numbers are starting to slip in Iowa.
And with the primary caucuses in Iowa just a few weeks away, she's going negative on Barack Obama.I think that's a dumb move, especially after Nov. 10 when she said at the Jefferson-Jackson dinner in Iowa that she wasn't interested in attacking other candidates.
It makes her seem desperate. Honestly, when you're the frontrunner you need to place yourself above all that.
I'm not the only one who thinks that way.
A lot of people who analyze politics for a living are raising an eyebrow or two at Hillary's decision to go negative.
And the way she's going about it is even more peculiar to me. That whole "my health care plan is truly universal and his isn't" thing seems petty.
And then there was the kindergarten thing.
Seems Obama, on the campaign trail, said he hadn't been planning for a long time to run for president.
Well, the Hillary campaign gleaned through the writings of Obama and were able to accuse him of "rewriting history" with that statement.
They were able to find at least two instances which prove that he had, in fact, at least thought about running for president a long time ago.
He mentioned it in writings when he was in kindergarten and again when he was in third grade. That's right - kindergarten and third grade.
I believe it was in response to a question from a teacher, you know, something like, "What do you want to be when you grow up?"
Anyway, Hillary brings this to the table in a national campaign for president.
That's just silly.
And you know what it tells me? It tells me that this whole "going negative" routine is pretty spur-of-the-moment.
These people - these campaign staffers - are professionals. If they knew months ago that they were going into attack mode a month before the Iowa caucuses, they would have had a plan. And they would have had some ammunition.
They wouldn't have come out with kindergarten and the Nya, nya, nya, nya, nyaaaa, nya, health care thing.
So it makes me think that Hillary and her people are a little worried. They know lots of things we don't. But I wonder what it is that has them busting on a candidate's musings as a 5-year-old?
I gotta say though, it's the first time I've ever seen anybody in politics use something the other person wrote while in kindergarten.
I'll give it to them for originality, I guess.
I've always said - and my liberal newsroom friends can attest to this - that Hillary simply has too high of negatives to win a general election.
I balked at saying she couldn't win a primary, but I'm beginning to think that may be the case.
The most optimistic of polls put her at a plus one when it comes to negatives. When comparing the percentage of people - Democrat or Republican - who view her positively versus those with a negative impression of her, it comes out 46 positive, 45 negative.
That's not good.
And an October poll, listing all the candidates for president, asked the simple question:
Whom would you NEVER vote for for President of the U.S.?
The results are as follows:
Clinton (D) 50%
Kucinich (D) 49%
Gravel (D) 47%
Paul (R) 47%
Brownback (R) 47%
Tancredo (R) 46%
McCain (R) 45%
Hunter (R) 44%
Giuliani (R) 43%
Romney (R) 42%
Edwards (D) 42%
Thompson (R) 41%
Dodd (D) 41%
Biden (D) 40%
Obama (D) 37%
Huckabee (R) 35%
Richardson (D) 34%
Not sure 4%
Another poll in November showed Hillary losing in a heads-up match against every one of the top five GOP candidates.
But Obama and Democrat John Edwards either tied or beat all five GOP candidates.
(This was an online survey that included 9,150 likely voters nationwide, and was conducted Nov. 21-26. It carried a margin of error of +/- 1.0 percentage points.)
Of course the Hillary camp says the polls are flawed, and maybe they are.
But the fact remains that Hillary Clinton - no matter how well she polls against other Democrats - still carries tons of negative political baggage.
Now I'm no Democrat, but in the spirit of bipartisanship, I'm going to help Hillary out.
I think when candidates are self-effacing, they're more attractive to voters.
So here are some campaign slogans I hope she uses to help turn the tide of negatives that are surrounding her. (These were gleaned from thoseshirts.com)
