I know that Sen. Obama is trying his hardest to run this campaign the way in which we would ALL like to see a campaign run. He is staying away from the smears and the character attacks. He is staying away from the MOUNTAINS of innuendos and hateful words that have been spewed at the Clintons for years from the Republican Right Wing attack machine. He is trying to run on a message of Hope, Change and Optimism. And, when you look at where he is right now, he has been rather successful in this tactic so far.

SO FAR... Now I feel as though it is time for him to make a slight shift towards the more negative. Now I think he needs to go on the offensive against the Clintons. He does not need to become as nasty as she has been, but there are some questions that don't involve character attacks, that he could more aggressively start to put into the minds of future voters.

First off, why change? Well, as we saw on Tuesday with Clinton's "wins", her constant attack mode, throw-the-kitchen-sink-at-him offensive is starting to work. (note: I put wins in quotes for two reasons. #1. She was up in the polls by 20% in both states just two weeks prior to their voting. She "won" them both by far smaller margins. #2. You do not win states in the Democratic Presidential primaries, you win delegates. The split on Tuesday night was within 3 or 4 delegates, not really a win for her has she has 140ish to make up.) We have this phenomenon where, for what ever reason, we voters claim that we hate the way political campaigns and politics in general have become so divisive and mean spirited, yet we continue to fall for the divisiveness and mean spiritedness. Perhaps if we voted more consistently for Hope, Change and Optimism it would become more pervasive? Just a thought.

Secondly, her attacks are coming at a feverishly quick (and increasingly nasty) pace. This is due to the fact that she has had little "comeback". It is like if you were in a snowball fight. When you are throwing snowballs, and the other person refuses to throw the snowballs back, only deflects those coming his way, you are liberated by not having to duck, seek cover, and regroup to throw your own snowballs again. If Obama wants to put any kind of an end to the attacks coming from her campaign, he needs to make her duck and cover a little bit too.

So where to begin? Obviously the big questions he needs voters to start thinking about, he has already begun to put out there. She needs to account for both her missing tax returns and her missing schedule logs from her time as a First Lady. If she is to run on 35 years of experience, we need to know as voters what she did for those 8 years when her job consisted of being the non-elected, no constitutional obligation First Lady of the United States. We also need to know as voters what sorts of monied interests her and her husband have had in the past 7 years that Bill Clinton has been out of office. Perhaps there might show up someone in those missing tax returns that we are not comfortable with. She should not get a pass on this and continue to say "I will release them at some point in the future".

Sen. Obama should also point out to voters that part of Sen. Clinton's 35 years of experience consists of time spent on the board of Wal-Mart. He needs to remind voters that her time there was at a time concurrent with Wal-Mart's attacks on unions and equal opportunities for female employees. He needs to remind voters that another part of her 35 years of experience was the relatively minuscule 7 years spent as a U.S. Senator (relative to Sen. McCain's 35 years of Senatorial experience). He needs to remind us of how few bills she introduced in that time that became laws.

These are just some places to start. But he needs to start, and soon...