NO MORE OBAMBI!

The Clinton campaign was quietly ecstatic over the news this weekend that Barack Obama would "start confronting Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton more directly." They interpret almost any even vaguely negative remark on Obama's part as an opportunity to portray the young senator as a hypocrite for failing to keep his promise to hew to a "different kind of politics." But there's little evidence that voters see Obama's questioning of Clinton's Social Security policy, of all things, as "abandon[ing] the politics of hope." Saying that Clinton hasn't been definitive about where Social Security funding will come from just doesn't strike me as particularly vicious, especially given the material that the Republicans won't hesitate to use. Press coverage has fallen neatly in line with the Obama-on-attack narrative, we'll see if his rhetoric ever escalates as high as that of the media.