Hillary Clinton is going to be the Democratic nominee, and one of the big reasons is that a bunch of guys with not too much to lose – Barack Obama, John Edwards, Joe Biden, and Chris Dodd – flinched for way too long in terms of making a tough critique of her.

Chris Dodd, for example, in now running an ad in Iowa that makes a subtle jab at John Edwards for his expensive haircuts. (Dodd asks a barbar a muffled, “how much for these haircuts?” in the closing seconds.) Gee, Senator, that’s really edgy… for six months ago. And he’s slamming a guy in third place and falling in Iowa. Hell, why not go after Richardson, at that point? Make it an absolute dogfight for fourth place.

(Also notice that right now, all of these guys are staking everything on Iowa. Can these guys not see that if four Not Hillary candidates divide the Not Hillary vote in Iowa, Hillary wins (or at least performs quite well)? Why aren’t any of them saying, to heck with it, I’m going to put my resources into New Hampshire, or South Carolina, or Nevada, and establish myself as the only competitive alternative to her in that state?)

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When the frontrunner is ahead by twenty to thirty nationally, and only remotely vulnerable in Iowa, it does no good for Edwards to jab at Obama, or Dodd or Richardson to jab at either. By the time one clear “Not Hillary” choice emerges from the melee, she’ll mop the floor with the battered and bloodied survivor.

In late August, John Edwards slipped a line into his speech: “the Lincoln Bedroom is not for rent.” And then he dropped it, right as the Norman Hsu scandal exploded. Obama goes after Hillary on a new theme every couple of days – the Iraq vote, on money from lobbyists, on her support for labeling the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps a terrorist organization – but none of the criticisms seem to draw much blood, or even create much buzz beyond a day. Has there been any criticism, any utterance, any contrast Obama has drawn that has made people gasp, raise their eyebrows, and say, ‘That will hurt her’?

I know he wants to run a different kind of campaign; I didn’t know that his preferred style had all the tenacity of a Care Bear.

One Republican strategist thinks the staffers of these rival campaigns are hedging their bets.

“No matter how the primary turns out, there’s no way any of the Republican candidates are going to be able to put me out of business,” said the strategist, currently advising one of the top-tier GOP contenders.

“Hillary can put all of John Edwards’ people out of business, and she would. She has that kind of power, and she has that kind of mean streak. The consequences of being critical of her are a lot more severe than the consequences of being critical in the Republican primary. We just don’t have that right now. Before, with Karl Rove and John Weaver in 2000 – Rove just put him out of business.* Those are the consequences. She can turn off the faucet and deprive them of resources.”

I can see that fear hanging over Democratic consultants, but at the end of the day, did any of these guys think Hillary Clinton was going to stumble on her own? Did any of think they would get the nomination without throwing a metaphorical punch? Did they think the Clinton machine was going to roll over and die for them? Get real.

A bit more background on the Rove-Weaver fight the consultant is referring to, from the September 6, 2004 New Republic (of course, it’s a Franklin Foer piece, so who knows if the story checks out):

But the Bushies–and especially Karl Rove, whose rivalry with Weaver dated back to their early careers in Texas–took all the steps necessary to seal the deal. At the direction of the White House, GOP campaign contracts stopped coming Weaver’s way. In one widely reported instance, Rove allegedly prevented Weaver from joining Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions’s reelection campaign. Things got so bad for Weaver that McCain told talk-show host Don Imus in March 2002, “John was made unwelcome in the Republican Party. He does have a right to make a living.”
In early 2002, Weaver reregistered as a Democrat. And even that doesn’t do justice to his alienation. Soon after crossing the aisle, he signed contracts with the Association of Trial Lawyers of America and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee — two organizations deeply committed to the defeat of Republican candidates. He joined the inner circle of consultants planning Dick Gephardt’s presidential campaign.