The White House put the blame on the Clintons for holding up the release of documents relating to Hillary Clinton’s activities during Bill’s administration. Hillary and Bill have both claimed to want the documents released as soon as possible, but Dana Perino says the Clintons have had the authority to approve releases for four weeks. So far, no one has heard from them:

The White House on Wednesday blamed the Clintons for a month-long delay in the release of some 11,000 pages of records relating to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s years as first lady, despite Sen. Clinton’s contention at Tuesday night’s debate that she has “urged that the process [of releasing documents] be as quick as possible.”

White House Press Secretary Dana Perino said that Clinton representatives have known since Jan. 31 that the documents — Hillary Clinton’s daily public schedule during her husband’s presidency — have been deemed ready for public release by the National Archives.

But under a November 2001 exectuive order, the White House can’t make them available to the public until approval is given by a designated representative of former President Bill Clinton.

“Presently, we have not received notice that the Clinton representative has reached a decision on the release or withholding of any of Mrs. Clinton’s schedules,” Perino said, adding that the White House has not objected to approval of any of the more than 550,000 pages of documents released so far from the Clinton years.

This would make more of an impact if Hillary hadn’t fallen so far off the pace in recent primaries. Barack Obama could use this to scold her on the trail, but right now he doesn’t need to sound like a George Bush echo. It will make little difference to Obama now whether those records come to light or not — he will almost certainly beat her to the nomination in the next four or five weeks regardless. She isn’t the issue any longer in the race.

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When the eventual post-mortems appear after the end of the Hillary Clinton campaign, people may want to reflect on a video montage presented by Eyeblast TV’s Danny Glover. Relying on clips from New Hampshire’s primary eve through yesterday, Glover puts the problem front and center:

Voters never made a connection with Hillary, because Hillary kept morphing into whatever her handlers thought the voters wanted. Need an emotional connection? Let’s have her tear up. Need a fighter? Have her waggle her finger at Obama. Be a victim of media injustice? Let’s have her complain during the debate and use Saturday Night Live as a vehicle for her complaining.

Obama, meanwhile, comes across as much more genuine. He hasn’t felt the need to pose on the stump, and because of that, the emotional connections have grown organically. Hillary has seemed manufactured, and poorly at that.

Voters in 2008 want the real deal. Both primaries have made that direction very, very clear.

Source: Hot Air

Tuesday night may have been the last time Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton would face off in a debate this primary season. Not only because Hillary’s candidacy is hanging by the fraying thread in Ohio and Texas, but remarkably because she can no longer be confident of winning these contests.

It used to be a given that Hillary, policy wonk and master of detail, would outshine Obama, master of the set speech and crowd pleasing rallies. But in the same way he beat her in fundraising and organization, he eventually proved to be her equal around the debate table. At every turn she sought to expose his weakness, only to have the effort backfire.

At the root of this problem is Hillary’s need for an opponent to demonize in order to define herself. In Arkansas it was teachers’ unions who opposed merit pay and other education reforms. In the White House it was the insurance industry who opposed her efforts to reform health care. She succeeded in getting legislation passed in Arkansas while failing miserably at health care reform, but the pattern can be seen throughout her career. Pick an enemy and attack.

Hillary was always most comfortable battling the infamous Vast Right Wing Conspiracy. When she was fighting Republicans and defending her husband she had the natural support of her party; and many in the country who thought the GOP was over-reaching. She even managed to leverage this into a Senate seat.

In her presidential campaign, this ability to survive was to be her trump card. She proclaimed herself the only one tough enough to win in November. There was only one small problem: she had to win the primary first.

In this scenario who was to play the foil for her attack politics? At first it was George W. Bush. But this only goes so far as she wasn’t running against Bush and he wouldn’t be on the ballot.

At some point she was going to have to articulate a vision of the future. But her entire rationale for running was tied to the past; her money, her name recognition, her popularity were all tied to nostalgia for the economic good times of her husband’s administration. How could she run on “change” when she was the epitome of an establishment candidate?

When push came to shove Hillary’s instincts kicked in and she sought to run against someone rather than on where she would take the country. Her constant touting of her “experience” was in clear contrast to Obama’s inexperience. Her solutions were in contrast to his mere rhetoric.

But once Obama proved to be more than a lightweight good at speeches Hillary was at a loss. Obama had set a trap. He was explicitly running on a new approach to politics and against the old attack style politics with which Hillary was most comfortable. He was seeking to move beyond the very battles she was running on.

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Two photos - both taken on the same day. One shows when the media loves you… One show when the media treats you like a Republican candidate running against who they want to win.

Bill Clinton is fond of injecting doubt about Barack Obama’s ability to weather radical right wing attacks in the general election. After all, his argument goes, Hillary has been completely vetted, and is still standing. Why then, he continues, take the risk of an Obama candidacy?

Obama’s victories suggest that Bill Clinton’s arguments have not been widely embraced. For one thing Bill Clinton is not exactly the perfect vehicle for delivering that message, having shown himself to be a risk to her campaign by his own misstatements.

The last debate, however, pointed to a risk of a Clinton candidacy even larger than Bill himself. Asked whether she would release her tax returns, Hillary waffled, finally agreeing to do so prior to the nomination, but not before Ohio/Texas primary day. Her excuse: she is too busy on the campaign trail to collect all those documents.

Huh? Her tax returns are already done and submitted to the IRS. She does not have to collect papers. All she need do is leave her accountant a voice mail (about 15 seconds), and have him hit the "send" button on his computer that stores her returns. If she can watch Saturday Night Live and MSNBC (she referred to her having watched them during the debate), then she certainly has 15 seconds to provide her accountant instructions to send out her tax returns.

Then, today, we are told by the campaign that there will be no tax returns released until after she secures the nomination.

Let us agree with Hillary that the American people care about their jobs, their children’s education, the Iraq War, healthcare, and other issues that directly impact them, and not candidates’ tax returns.

Nonetheless, it is hard to listen to the waffling, and then the redrawn line-in-the-sand, without assuming that there must be some very embarrassing information in those returns that would turn off voters. Why else would she just not release them, and remove doubt?

If this information were minor embarrassments, she would have released the returns months ago when she was still the overwhelming frontrunner, let the news cycle a few days, and then die a death of boredom. It cannot be embarrassment at their wealth or income, because that is obvious — one does not loan a campaign their last $5 million.

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Can you imagine IF this was a Republican candidate who was not paying his bills - do you think the media would ever stop running this story?

"You know, I’m going to start thanking the woman who cleans the restroom in the building I work in. I’m going to start thinking of her as a human being."

- Hillary Clinton

Whether one likes, dislikes, loves, hates, admires, fears, despises, or envies them, every Clinton watcher has this in common: They are dumbfounded both by the incompetence with which Hillary has run for president and her intransigence at sticking to a failed message. In a demonstration of inability and inflexibility reminiscent of her healthcare debacle of 1993-94, Mrs. Clinton seems destined to fulfill Voltaire’s description of the Bourbon kings of France: “They learn nothing. They forget nothing.”

Even now, with her back against the wall, fighting for her political career, Hillary, presumably with Bill’s acquiescence, insists on making the same mistakes that landed her in the soup. No new tactics, no new strategy, no new message emerges.

Incredibly, both Clintons are harping, once more, on the theme of experience to carry the day. No matter that it hasn’t worked since before Iowa; they repeat the same mantra endlessly — that Hillary can “hit the ground running” on “Day One.” Will they ever realize that voters grasp two essential facts:

(a) That Hillary’s experience is derivative of Bill’s and her claims to his achievements are largely invented and spurious, and

(b) That the real edge she has in experience is her ability to repeat the strategies, tactics, message, fundraising models and campaign style of the 1990s, something modern voters reject emphatically?

Why, after losing 24 states, do Hillary and Bill fail to get these messages? Are they saving up these insights for their memoirs?

And why do the Clintons persist in running a negative campaign even when they can’t find anything to be negative about? Alienating voters with their abrasive attacks without attracting them with their content, they throw pitty-pat punches accusing Obama one day of plagiarism for borrowing speech lines from his close and consenting friend and the next day for accurately describing Hillary’s healthcare plan as requiring sanctions to make those who do not wish to sign up do so against their will (albeit for policies Mrs. Clinton deems to be “affordable”).

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Barack Obama has moved ahead of Hillary Clinton in Texas.

The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey shows Obama attracting 48% of the vote while Clinton earns 44%. Eight percent (8%) remain undecided and another 12% say it’s possible they could change their mind. That latter figure includes 3% who say there’s a good chance they could change their mind.

Obama leads by sixteen points among men, but trails by nine among women. Clinton’s lead among Hispanic voters is down to seven percentage points.

Among those who are undecided, 73% have a favorable opinion of Clinton and 66% say the same about Obama.

Overall, 76% have a favorable opinion of Clinton and 75% view Obama in such a positive light.

Seventy-nine percent (79%) believe Clinton would be at least somewhat likely to win the White House if nominated. Seventy-eight percent (78%) say the same about Obama.

These latest results show a continuing trend in Obama’s favor. Last Sunday, Clinton led by a single point. Last week, Clinton was up by three. Two weeks ago, the former First Lady enjoyed a double digit lead. The Rasmussen Reports surveys in Texas include people who have already voted and those who are likely to vote. Currently, Obama leads by six among those who have already voted or are absolutely certain they will vote.

Read more at Rasmussen Report

She’s reminded of it all the time around here, so Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton couldn’t have been surprised when her failed 2000 campaign promise to bring 200,000 jobs to economically desperate upstate New York became part of the latest presidential debate.

In her first term in the Senate, the region saw a net loss of 26,500 jobs, according to an analysis of U.S. Bureau of Labor statistics by the Business Council of New York State.

"All one has to do is listen to talk radio to know that’s on a lot of people’s minds," said Kevin Hardwick, a political science professor at Canisius College in Buffalo.

Clinton recently called the promise "a little exuberant." During Tuesday’s debate with Barack Obama, the New York senator said she was figuring Al Gore would be in the White House.

"When I made the pledge, I was counting on having a Democratic White House, a Democratic president, who shared my values about what we needed to do to make the economy work for everyone and to create shared prosperity," she said.

"And as you know, despite the difficulties of the Bush administration and a Republican Congress for six years of my first term, I have worked very hard to create jobs, but obviously as president I will have a lot more tools at my disposal," she said.

The failed 200,000 number got its share of attention during Clinton’s 2006 bid for re-election, but it hardly hurt her. She easily beat back a challenge from former Yonkers Mayor John Spencer.

THE SPIN:

By saying her job-creation efforts for upstate were stymied in the Senate by a Republican administration and policies, Clinton hopes to deflect doubt about her ability to fulfill a new pledge as president to create 5 million new jobs over 10 years.

THE FACTS:

From 1990 to 2000, New York state jobs grew at a rate of about 13 percent, while the nation saw a 20 percent jump. If the upstate region, with 3.1 million jobs in 2000, had broken out of its sluggish 5 percent growth to be on par with the entire state or the nation, that could have meant a couple hundred thousand jobs.

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