April 30, 2008
The Clinton Fallacy

As the media continues to play up the narrative of Obama's struggling presidential prospects, the Clinton Campaign continues to pound the stories that create that narrative as proof that Obama will be an awful general election candidate against McCain. "Yes," the Clinton campaign will claim, "we were right to go hard after Obama despite outcry amongst certain democrats, because we showed that Obama will not be able to stand up to a general election onslaught by the Republican Attack Machine." I don't buy the argument. You see there one small, tiny (cigar sized?) hole in the logic - a fallacy if you will:

To prove that one candidate cannot stand up to the Republican Attack Machine in no way proves that the other candidate can.

Remember: in the year leading up to the primary season the common wisdom was that the primary would divide into two candidates a Hillary and an anti-Hillary. Why would there be an anti-Hillary? Because her negatives were so high that it was a wide spread belief that she would be a disaster in the general election. Lucky for us in Obama we found an anti-Hillary candidate who grew above that role - his very success attests for that. And just because he flutters now, doesn't mean she won't be the same disaster in the general that everyone worried about a year ago.

Maybe the Clinton campaign should hold themselves to their own standard and see how well she will be standing once she gets hit with the type of heavy attacks that she has been lobbing at Obama.

Posted by jdmoshe to political dispatches at 12:20PM on Apr 30, 2008
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