Doin' The Triangulation

With 10% of the precincts reporting (as of 9:40), Clinton leads 55-45%, not a bad spread for Obama, given his 20-points-behind start and the frankly shameful (or is it shameless?) coverage of the last six weeks. Talking Points Memo has constant updates. Over at Ich Bin Ein Oberliner, John West notes one particularly stupid remark from congential foot-in-mouther Ed Rendell, the PA governor who's backing Senator Clinton:

"But what I find amazing, particularly because our students are brighter than ever and it doesn't matter whether it's Penn or Lasalle or whatever, the students go and drink the Kool-Aid of a wonderful speech..."

It's fascinating to me that Democrats have spent eight years often unfairly mocking and maligning Al Gore for his "horrible" 2000 campaign, his dull campaign style, his string of dumb decisions and dorky attitudes-- and now all of those supposed negatives, about bad style and hackneyed speeches and ham-handed appeals, are being spun as positives, markers of some strange definition of "authenticity" by Clinton's supporters. As The Daily Show put it a couple of months ago, the campaign's rallying cry seems to be "No We Can't! No We Can't!" It's not only a strange campaign strategy (if probably necessary, given Obama's rhetorical brilliance), but one which suggests a real fear of style, something that doesn't bode well for the Dems should Clinton squeak her way to the nomination this summer. But hey, I'm sure that the famous Clinton campaign skill will kick in at any moment, and the juggernaut that James Wolcott wrote paeans to last month will gather steam, and we'll all forget about the campaign debt and fired staff and media sniping, the disingenuousness and the victim strategizing, the "3 a.m." phone call ad and Mark Penn, the race-baiting and the gun-toting and the false statements about nuclear weapons in Iran and...um, tell me how this is a progressive feminist campaign, again?