Where are the Clintons when Barry needs them most?

Clearly, they're not on the stump for him. Hillary has stated she will not carry Obama's water in attacking Sarah Palin, and Bill has been noticeably absent for weeks. Could it have something to do with how he and his surrogates treated the Clintons? Hell yes. He ran against them, told Democrats they were the past and he was the future. In his acceptance speech he didn't even note Bill Clinton when noting strong Democrat presidents of the past. And the analysis coming out is that the Obama camp is intimidated by Sarah Palin, and the Clintons aren't going to go after her. In fact, they're campaigning for the down ticket congressional races:

Reporters tried to get Mrs. Clinton to talk about John McCain’s running mate at a tiny press conference after the event, but she refused even to mention Mrs. Palin’s name, saying only, “I am campaigning for Senator Obama and advocating on behalf of the Democratic Party and our positions.”

Stop the presses.

With the McCain campaign running tactical circles every day around the Obama outfit—which has failed, somewhat unbelievably, to come up with even a semi-compelling response to the Palin selection—one might think Mrs. Clinton, to say nothing of her sidelined husband, would be a useful surrogate on the counterattack right about now. Apparently, the Obama campaign does not agree.
“My concern is that I see them as totally reactive right now as opposed to getting out there on their own and saying what the hell they are about,” said Leon Panetta, a former chief of staff to Bill Clinton who has advised Mr. Obama. “They seem to be intimidated by the Palin pick. They seem to be intimidated by how the Republicans are coming at them on change. And you cannot win if you are constantly on defense.”

Mr. Panetta added, “As president of the United States you are going to have to learn how to deal with people you may not particularly like, because if you are trying to get things done, you have got to use everything and everybody that you can to get it done. I do think that they absolutely in this race have got to make use of the Clintons in every possible way, because they need them. He has clearly got some problems out there.”

Depending on who’s doing the telling, the reason the Clintons have been apportioned such a modest role—even as the Obama campaign gets pasted on a daily basis by the opposition—is either that remarkably little has been demanded of them, or simply that they don’t feel up for doing much more.

Most of the former and present Clinton staffers interviewed for this story, as well as Mr. Obama’s campaign, say that the limited role she has taken in advocating Mr. Obama’s candidacy is by design, and that she is doing precisely what is asked of her.

We’re not seeing more of her, in other words, because that’s how they want it.
“If they asked Hillary to do more, she’d be happy to do it,” said one Clinton adviser.

But one source close to the Clintons provided a slightly different version of events, saying that a high ranking Obama staff member indicated to a Clinton counterpart that they would like Mrs. Clinton to take a more aggressive tack, and that the answer was no.

HT to Captain Ed

They want Hillary to be an attack dog, and she's having none of it. Joe Biden's supposed to be the attack dog, but given his foot-in-mouth disease, he's not doing such a good job on it. That was proven again yesterday with this statement:

“I hear all this talk about how the Republicans are going to work in dealing with parents who have both the joy, because there’s joy to it as well, the joy and the difficulty of raising a child who has a developmental disability, who were born with a birth defect. Well guess what folks? If you care about it, why don’t you support stem cell research?”

He's referring to embryonic stem-cell research, of course, and taking that shot at Sarah Palin because she opposes it. But this shows his utter stupidity in making that claim. Downs syndrome can't be helped by ESCR. What is Downs syndrome, folks. You know what it is. It's a chromosomal disorder that's the result of an extra chromosome during the gestation of a baby in the womb. Stem-cells aren't going to help that. Way to go, Joe. Keep showing that idiocy. You're doing a great job as an attack dog.

That's why the Obama camp wants Hillary out there. That's why they need her out there, but she's not going to go on the attack. She's literally campaigning, and offering little in terms of red meat in her stumps. That's because the rift between her and Obama isn't healed. Put on the smile, wave to the crowd, talk about how Democrats need to be elected over Republicans, and that's it. That's all she's going to give them. The Obama camp -- him, his campaign, his surrogates, and the media -- treated Hillary like a Kleenex - soft, strong, and disposable. They wanted to be rid of the Clintons so badly that they went on an all-out offensive against them.

You reap what you sow, and it's clear that all Obama did was sow division in the party when he needed it unified. And now he has no unity. He has no one willing to help him fight the McCain/Palin ticket, OR he has no one competent enough to do it.

Today, it really sucks to be Barack Obama. He's running out of money. He's cutting his strategy down. And now, when he needs it most, the only thing the Clintons are willing to hand isn't a helping hand. They're handing him an anchor, and wishing him "good luck" as the McCain/Palin ticket hammers him on everything he says, does, and stands for.

Publius II