Obama Shifts to General-Election Mode

[kevinmc]

WSJ

The Obama campaign appears poised to begin running its general election campaign after Tuesday night’s primaries seemed unlikely to change the math or the momentum in the Democratic nomination.

David Axelrod, the top Obama strategist, told reporters that Barack Obama would compete for the six remaining Democratic contests, where 217 delegates are at stake. But he said that the campaign would soon focus on the general election because likely Republican nominee John McCain had “basically run free for some time now because we’ve been consumed with this.” He added: “I don’t think we’re going to spend time solely in primary states.”

.....

The strategist also attributed a share of Clinton’s narrow lead in Indiana to Rush Limbaugh’s “Operation Chaos,” where the talk show host encouraged Republican listeners to vote for Clinton in the Democratic primary in order to prolong the nomination battle. “If we come up short, they ought to call a press conference tomorrow and thank Rush Limbaugh for the victory,” he said. “Because there’s no doubt if they do win it’ll be by a margin so narrow that the Limbaugh project will have given them the margin.”

Axelrod also argued that the debate over a three month gas-tax holiday pushed by Clinton, which Obama had heavily criticized in recent days, may have backfired for the New York senator. “People were skeptical. I think this gas tax bit really worked for us,” he said. One reporter pressed: Why didn’t it work? The reply was blunt: “Because it was a stupid idea and we said so.”

[Coexist]

1. “Because it was a stupid idea and we said so.”

funny.