Michael Goodwin, New York Daily News
Debates about debates are common in campaigns, but that is no ordinary invitation Hillary Clinton is extending to Barack Obama. It’s a gang-girl taunt when she tells a big rally she will go anywhere, anytime for a throwdown.
She offers to do it without a moderator, just the two of them asking and answering questions. Stripped of her gauzy spin that it could be like Lincoln-Douglas, she’s really challenging him to a bareknuckle punchout. On TV.
It’s what a schoolyard tough would do: Knock on a rival’s door and dare him to come out and fight on the street. Right here, right now. No rules, just a slugfest, you and me.
She does it because she needs to bloody Obama to win. And because she knows she can kick his butt in a debate.
Obama says no to her because he thinks he can win the nomination without facing her. He also knows she can kick his butt one on one.
This much they agree on: She’s tougher than he is. So she wins the debate on debates by demanding one that he ducks.
Welcome to yet another defining moment in the Long March toward the Democratic nomination. He’s soft and wounded and she’s nasty and desperate.
She’s even talking about “obliterating” Iran to prove how tough she is. And she calls Dick Cheney Darth Vader!
Sixteen months after it started in glory, the Dem fight has fallen to Snob-ama vs. the Obliterator, the Unelectable vs. the Unlikable. Yuck.
