Obama to Hillary: stop playing the victim

Interesting. Now that Clinton is finally getting a little pressure from her opponents, her campaign sure keeps mentioning how she's being ganged up on by a bunch of men.

[...] her advisers aprgued that the "piling on" engaged in by an all-male field of opponents will ultimately drive more female voters into her camp.

"They really went from 'Let's talk about what I believe' to 'Let me try to do a gotcha against Hillary Clinton,' " said one Clinton adviser, speaking on the condition of anonymity. "Ultimately, it was six guys against her, and she came off as one strong woman."

At the endorsement announcement, AFSCME President Gerald W. McEntee presented Clinton with boxing gloves and highlighted the campaign's theme that Tuesday's debate was little more than a group of men ganging up on the front-runner. "Some of you may have seen last night's debate," he said. "Six guys against Hillary. I'd call that a fair fight."

Hillary as well:

New York Sen. Clinton told students at her alma mater, Wellesley College, an all-women's college outside Boston, that, "In so many ways, this all-women's college prepared me to compete in the all-boys club of presidential politics."

So is she being hit because she's a woman, or because she happens to be the prohibitive front-runner?

Seriously. For a front-runner, Hillary has gotten a surprisingly easy ride. It's one of the reasons I've been disdainful of her opposition. No one seems to be playing to win. If anyone remembers 2003, the pressure on Howard Dean was relentless from his opponents. That's what you'd expect from those who genuinely want to dethrone a front-runner and claim the prize for themselves.

So is this all a ploy to build more support among women? Her campaign vehemetly denies it.

Clinton spokesman Phil Singer said Clinton did not use the speech to try to drum up support from women voters. "She did no such thing," he said.

So Clinton gives a speech at an all-women's college, but she didn't give it to drum up support from women's voters? Really? Was she asking them not to vote for her? Singer's assertion is patently ridiculous. All candidates give speeches to drum up support from the people in the audience -- women included.

The question isn't whether she is trying to win support amongst women. Of course she is. They all are. The question is whether she and her surrogates are trying to use "victim" imagery to do so.

Obama certainly thinks so:

"I am assuming and I hope that Sen. Clinton wants to be treated like everybody else. And I think that that's why she's running for President.

"When we had a debate back in Iowa awhile back, we spent I think the first 15 minutes of the debate hitting me on various foreign policy issues. And I didn't come out and say: 'Look, I'm being hit on because I look different from the rest of the folks on the stage'. I assumed it was because there were real policy differences there [...]

"I don't think that people doubt that Senator Clinton is tough. She's used to playing in national politics. And in fact that is one of the things that she has suggested is why she should be elected -- because she's been playing in this rough-and-tumble stage.

"So it doesn't make sense for her, after having run that way for eight months, the first time that people start challenging her point of view, that suddenly she backs off and says: 'Don't pick on me. That is not obviously how we would expect her to operate if she were President."

It's a thin line between "I'm so empowered I kicked all these mens' asses" and "Help me! These men are ganging up on me!" Did she or her campaign cross that line? I'm not so sure. If they haven't crossed it, they are right there on the edge.

But regardless, I like the more aggressive posturing by her opponents. It looks like they finally have her campaign on the defensive and we may just get a real contest after all.