"She's a fighter!" Hillary has finally found her voice, and with boxing imagery, has recast herself as the real "fighter" in this race.
Crediting the historic industrial role of Ohioans in the hard-hit steel and manufacturing industries for turning the middle class into an economic engine of national prosperity, Clinton said, “I’m here today because I want to let you know, I’m a fighter, a doer and a champion, and I will fight for you.
Obama needs to turn this back on Hillary. She's a fighter all right - but a fighter only for the sake of fighting.
It plays perfectly into his theme of transcending partisan bickering and turning the page. Obama's current messaging problem is that his campaign is defined by the notion of "change."
However, it's never been clear what voters are supposed to expect change from. Both Hillary and Obama represent "change" from 8 years of Bush/Cheney. Of course, so would electing a ficus plant. Hillary rides this ambiguity to say that she also represents change. Obama needs to spend this 7 weeks defining Hillary, so that he can thereby define for the voters the kind of change he represents.
He should frame it as: Hillary's a fighter for fighting's sake. She fights with Democrats She fights the media. She fights because fighting is all she knows. There's a difference, however, between fighting and doing. You can't fight your way to health care reform. She tried that in 1993 and failed miserably. You have to pick your battles. She's shown that she's not willing to fight for unpopular causes. When it was popular to back the Iraq War in 2002, she didn't fight for our soldiers or for America. She didn't fight George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. No, she curiously chose to sit that fight out. When it came time to stand up for ordinary Americans rights against creditors, she curiously chose to sit that fight out as well. She voted for the Bankruptcy Bill in 2001, and didn't show up to vote on the 2005 Bankruptcy Reform Bill that took the rights of ordinary Americans and gave rights to credit card companies.
American doesn't need just fighting. America needs winning. [NOTE the parallelism with Clinton's charge that Obama is just words, not solutions]
She can't point to a single legislative battle she's won simply by fighting.
I think that's a pretty devastating theme. It also paints a very unflattering picture of her as a woman.