Obama Needs to Punch

I've long thought this but am only now just getting around to posting it. So, it might well be moot in the wake of Obama's sterling night in Indiana and North Carolina yesterday - he might well have already won this thing.

But he needs to knock Clinton the fuck out.

He needs to stomp on her neck and finish this thing. But, as Mr. Klein points out here, he hasn't (See how old that link is? I'm telling you, this one's been in the dock for a while now.).

And the reason, I think, is that to play for lack of a better word hardball would be to turn against his whole "above the partisan fray" shtick. It cuts across the entire theme of his campaign to start counter-punching and hammering home a message that Clinton is done, has been done, and needs to get the hell out of his way.

But there's a way to do so without countering his well-crafted public image: Get nasty.

In front of the cameras, it's all hands reaching across the aisle. Trying to bridge the divide and heal the gap and move the process forward.

In the back rooms and on the phones, though, it's an entirely different matter. In private, Obama needs to start working the superdelegates. He and his representatives need to be talking to as many and possible and delivering the clear message that the train is leaving the station. Obama will be the eventual nominee. And, when he is, he's going to remember who was with him when it counted and who hopped on the bandwagon once it was rolling. And the people who aren't supporting him now are going to pay for it down the line.

In other words, "You might be afraid of what the Clintons will do if they win. You should be afraid of what I'm going to do if they don't."