I meant to note this from my Clinton rally yesterday, but just remembered again while leafing through my notes. Clinton now has this line where she says (slight paraphrase, as I'm hand-transcribing), "Let's be serious about change. Change isn't voting for the PATRIOT Act then criticizing it. Change isn't saying you won't take lobbyist money then appointing a lobbyist as head of your New Hampshire campaign. Change isn't bragging about passing the Patient's Bill of Rights when it never passed. Change isn't talking about your opposition to the Iraq War then voting for more funding." Those are attacks on, in order, Edwards, Obama, Edwards, and Obama. But what's interesting about the charges is the direction in which they point. On each of the relevant issues there, Hillary is on the wrong side of her own rhetoric. She voted for the PATRIOT Act. She voted for the war. She takes lobbyist money and defends their contributions. And she voted for the PBR, and also couldn't pass it. None are issues that give her any advantage. And it's testament to the magnitude of her task that she's trying to battle on such unfriendly turf. The change narrative just isn't one that suits her. What she's trying to argue here is that Edwards and Obama are liars, but since she feel she has to frame everything in terms of change, she's attacking them for tendencies and failures that are, in fact, far more exaggerated within herself. She's battling under their frames rather than reemphasizing her own.
