Weirdest Campaign Memo EVAR

Was checking what Matt Yglesias has to say for himself today, and saw a post about this campaign memo sent out by the Clinton campaign today.

If you're resorting to stuff like that, Hillary, it's time to throw in the towel. Obama's lead in Texas, according to the most recent American Research group poll, is 7%, and he's closing the gap in Ohio. Hell, while walking to Rite-Aid earlier today, I saw on the ticker of the New Haven NBC affiliate that Obama is within 6% in Pennsylvania. I read the memo above as a shockingly blunt quasi-admission of defeat. Hillary has been trumpeting Texas and Ohio ever since Super Tuesday; to see her already pre-spinning anything short of an Obama sweep is astounding. The memo says that if Obama fails to sweep, "there's a problem" for the Obama campaign, because he will look bad after pouring resources into losing efforts. Maybe it's just me, but didn't he pour resources into California? He lost that one, but it doesn't seem to have affected him all that much - and that defeat came before the Hot Streak.

But the single most bizarre (and, in my opinion, most damaging) line is the last one, which asserts that anything short of an Obama sweep would demonstrate that the Democratic voters "have their doubts about Senator Obama and are having second thoughts about him as a prospective standard-bearer." But the entire memo up to that point seems to be doing nothing but demonstrating how the Clinton campaign is having second thoughts about its own ability to secure the nomination. Projecting their own self-doubt, perhaps? Freud would have a field day...

In other news, John McCain can't seem to figure out how to classify himself politically. Yglesias makes a good point about why Republicans are having a hard time reconciling themselves to McCain, and his calling himself a "liberal Republican" sure isn't going to help matters. And anyway, shouldn't the pilot of the Straight Talk Express be able to refrain from describing himself as "conservative" and "liberal" in the same breath? I realize that this is politics we're talking about, but contradictions in terms seem to be a bit beyond any conceivable definition of "straight talk."