She was the star today. If you were in the room, listening, watching and taking it all in, she simply rose way above everyone else. That she came after Obama did her some good, because she, quite frankly, made him look like an amateur. She was personable. Likeable. Knowledgeable in the extreme. There were also specifics to her delivery that were unmistakable and could not be ignored, except by those who refuse to give her a chance. The voters in the room took to her and got her, responding with laughter and applause. I specifically appreciated her choice to stand rather than sit next to Karen Tumulty, the moderator. She was comfortable and natural in the setting, clearly loving this new role, something I can only imagine she's dreamed of manifesting her whole life. Her Midwestern twang is definitely back, which I can appreciate, though it illustrates something else. Hillary Clinton is coming into her own. She's feeling some momentum or maybe she's just having a damn fine time. Whatever it is it shows....and then gets them taken away.
Newer additions to Hillary's fold also suggest that her hawkish profile is about more than just polls. One is her Senate foreign policy staffer Andrew Shapiro. The 39-year-old Shapiro is affable but charged with nervous energy. (Sitting in the audience at a recent Clinton speech on the military, he rocked steadily back and forth like Rain Man at Wapner time.) A Gore-Lieberman campaign aide and Justice Department lawyer, Shapiro was also briefly a research assistant at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a center-right think tank. Shapiro is "a mainstream foreign Democratic policy establishment moderate," says a congressional foreign policy aide. "He's hawkish on defense issues and Israel." It is Shapiro, Hillaryites say, who is in the room for most of her important foreign policy decisions.There's nothing positive to me about Hillary's "midwestern twang," by the way. Just sayin'.
New odds:
Hillary 45%
Obama 40%
Edwards 10%
Anybody else 5%
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