RE: OBAMA. Dana, what struck me about Dickerson's article suggesting the Obama campaign begin to panic about Clinton's apparent strength is how weak Dickerson's suggestions were. That's not necessarily his fault, as it's hard to make up 20 percent in the polls, and if there were an obvious way to do it, one of Obama's advisors would have mentioned it to the candidate and they wouldn't be in a distant second-place anymore. But one thing the Obama campaign could do is start bringing out some bolder policy. Their health plan was less impressive than either Clinton or Edwards' offerings, their plan for withdrawal from Iraq was rather typical for the race, and their new tax plan is, well, incremental is almost too generous. It's just some giveaways and goodies -- giveaways and goodies that I support, to be sure, but that don't do much to reform or simplify a fairly mucked-up tax code. As Kevin says, "[Obama seems] cautious to a fault. His big foreign policy speech was fine, but cautious and mainstream. His big healthcare speech was fine, but cautious and mainstream. And now his big tax speech is....just cautious and mainstream. I really want to hear something big and controversial from Obama, something that demonstrates a desire to shake up the status quo. But he just doesn't seem to be willing to take any chances." And it's hard to make up 20 points when you won't take chances. --Ezra Klein
