With Obama pinned down unable to talk about anything but the unfortunate Rev. Wright, I now see that Clinton is running ads attacking Obama for his failure to endorse John McCain's "gas tax holiday" idea. We've already talked about why this is a bad idea. Paul Krugman argues that Clinton's version is merely pointless rather than evil, but he misses the real point: that this is publicly identified as McCain's idea, and that once again Clinton is shilling for him, letting him sound like a reasonable person instead of a lunatic. Even if her tactic gains her some ground against Obama, it only digs her a deeper hole against McCain. They're practically a tag team.

Krugman goes on to slam Obama once again on health care -- "so poisoning the well by in effect running against universality." I'm not up on those details, but if Clinton can find some room to run to the left of Obama on health care, I'm all for that. (At least, as far as I know, she hasn't come out and endorsed McCain's idiot do-nothing policies.)

Further down in his blog, Krugman quotes Walter Shapiro on Obama: "By predicating almost his entire campaign on inspiration and process (he can reform the broken system in Washington and Clinton cannot), Obama has deliberately forsaken bread-and-butter issues as a means of persuasion." Krugman adds, if Obama "runs this way in the general election -- if it's about the candidate's awesomeness, not about why progressive policies make peoples' lives better -- it's a formula for defeat." Seems to me that may have been a legitimate poke back when Edwards was in the race, but I don't see that Clinton has any credible space to the left of Obama -- especially not when she's running on her husband's coattails, let alone McCain's. As it is, Obama crushed Edwards, running for Democratic votes where talking up progressive policies should be preaching to the choir. Whether he shifts his emphasis in the fall against McCain, where there's a lot more space between their policies, remains to be seen. But one thing I wonder is whether, given the media, people will notice. For example, this is what Obama had to say about the Clinton-McCain gas tax holiday:

This isn't an idea designed to get you through the summer, it's designed to get them through an election. The easiest thing in the world for a politician to do is to tell you what they think you want to hear. But if we're gonna solve our challenges right now, then we've gotta start telling the American people what they need to hear. Tell 'em the truth.

I don't suppose you heard that on the evening news.