From Lobs to Smashes: Clinton & Obama Volley for Votes

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Seeing how the two leading Democratic presidential campaigns played the pre-primary game back in December was like watching badminton. Criticisms that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama lobbed at each other were as light as shuttlecocks and as easily batted away. Then came New Hampshire. Hillary Clinton's emotional moment and her subsequent win turned the game into table tennis. Faster-paced, harder volleys. Everybody began to break a sweat.

Nevada may have been a win for Clinton in the vote totals, but the delegate count went to Obama. And so the game being played shifted into tennis. It became clear that the amount of effort expended could turn the game around. And that's where it began to get tricky.

Pinch hitters come from the game of baseball, not tennis. But in the week leading up to the South Carolina primary, Hillary Clinton turned to her husband Bill to serve as her pinch hitter -- or volleyer -- in the state. Whether this was a good move or a bad move isn't for me to say. But many felt his serves crossed the line. At Salon.com, Glenn Greenwald observed:

The Clintons' strategy has become increasingly trashy, even ugly, and yesterday's remarks by Bill Clinton -- in which he pointedly compared Obama's candidacy to Jesse Jackson's and thus implicitly (though clearly) dismissed South Carolina as a state where the "black candidate" wins, followed up by the Clinton campaign's anonymous branding of Obama as "the black candidate" -- reeked of desperation.

The South Carolina primary win of Obama over Clinton was expected. But it's hard to know if the margin would have been as great had it not been for husband Bill, whose playing style made some boo in disgust. And the contest between Clinton and Obama? It's a game of racquetball now, where the opponents don't -- or won't -- look each other in the eye. The lobs are long gone. Now every time someone connects to the ball, it's a smash. Every surface is a playable surface.

This is the stretch that will test their endurance, the days leading up to Tuesday. And we watch, as the possibility that one or the other will be President of the United States goes back and forth, back and forth.