It's because Obama's communication director, Robert Gibbs, has developed a very compelling narrative of victimization that surrounds and envelops his candidate.
This narrative is designed to shield Obama from the blowback of his own negative campaigning, which has intensified in previous weeks. With Barack Obama in the lead, it's raining turds in Iowa. (I suppose Iowa has always smelled a bit like a barn, but it's going to take more than Hercules to clean out these Augean stables when we're through.) You'd never know it, though, because the campaign feeds enough victim-in-a-jar to the press to always keep the story about how mean everyone else is being to him.
Barack Obama, always a victim and never a bride?
And who is Robert Gibbs, the Obama communication director?
He was one of the folks responsible for the notorious Howard Dean/Osama bin Laden ad that helped kill the Dean movement in 2004. Funny how it's okay to use Osama bin Laden to hurt Howard Dean. But say the words "Osama" and "Obama" in the same sentence? Don't victimize our candidate!
Sometimes, you have to stand up a be a leader. You cannot rely on pity and the mothering instincts of your supporters when it comes to leading a country.
The Barack Obama campaign has been playing very dirty for weeks.
Some local Clinton staffers screw around on a liberal blog -- and you think that world might end.
Yet, you take a campaign like Barack Obama's, which has been consistently ugly and -- my guess -- will get even uglier as the weeks pass and you'd think it was Little Miss Muffett, the way its dainty sensibilities have been offended.
Robert Gibbs now gloats to Time, hoping to score it big off the latest Obama victim story.
My advice to Obama:
Toughen up, figure out what your positions are and begin trying to communicate what -- in real terms -- you plan to provide for the country instead of this amorphous "change" thing. Drop the ugly campaigning and the attacks. Rise above the turmoil and come off as a leader.
My advice to Clinton:
Unless you have smear-masters as talented as Robert Gibbs on this staff, do not even try to play this game. You are out-classed.