With Senator Barack Obama pulling off a hat trick Tuesday, winning Virginia, Maryland, and the District of Columbia, his 8th straight win, Team Clinton is preparing to go the rest of the month having not won a single primary or caucus.
        Party insiders are cautioning the New York senator that she is walking a slippery rope pinning all her hopes on the March 4th primaries in Texas and Ohio (along with Rhode Island and Vermont); by then, some say, the momentum swing to Obama’s corner might be irreversible
        So with her back to the wall, and her campaign in urgent need of some retooling, here are a few recommendations on how Clinton can begin to shift the momentum back to her corner of the ring.

1.) First order of business: fire her campaign manager. Oops! She already did that. On to no 2.

2.). The best way for Clinton to spark some excitement is by naming a VP.
Remember, Bill Clinton’s campaign in 1992 didn’t really catch fire until he named Al Gore as his running mate.
With the latest exit polls showing Obama having won 54 percent of the white male vote in Maryland, and 56 percent in Virginia, giving either John Edwards or Joe Biden the nod, might help appeal to a slice of the white voting population leaning toward Obama.  Biden and Edwards, for the time being, are uncommitted to either candidate, but a Clinton headlock might change their minds.

3.) Clinton needs to start attacking Obama where he is weakest: foreign policy. She could point out his Iraq record is not as pristine as he's making out. The Boston Globe for example, reports the Illinois junior senator voted for separate war appropriations totaling more than $300 billion; and in June, 2006 he voted ``no’’ to remove combat troops in Iraq by 2007. And since Clinton’s initial authorization for the war in Iraq is constantly being used against her, she needs to find other members of congress to speak on her behalf that they too, much like Senator Clinton, were misguided by the current administration’s hard sell in the early stages of the war, but changed course once the facts became known.

4.) Clinton needs to focus on her single greatest strength: health care: an issue that will resonate with Texans, given more than 25 percent of the state or 5.5 million people are without health care. In Ohio, more than 12 percent of the state is uninsured.

5) Reverse the Obama chant: ``Yes We Can’’ to ``No He Can’t’’. Clinton can ask voters, for example, if Barack Obama can deliver health care coverage to all Americans? Answer: ``No He Can’t.’’  Can Barack Obama win any large state with a diverse population? Answer: ``No He Can’t.’’

6.) Hillary desperately needs big name endorsements, and here she needs to reach for the stars, someone like Tiger Woods or Eli Manning; even Al Gore or Mario Cuomo would help; while steering away from Ann Coulter and Roger Clemens.

7.) Now that the television writer strike is over, Hillary needs to book herself on Letterman or Leno, and do something unpredictable that will show off her lighter side, like when hubby Bill played the sax on the Arsenio Hall show.

8.) Put Obama on the defense, making him explain his missing votes in the Senate.

9.) Tell Bill to give it a rest. One of the biggest momentum shifts, I thought, was during the South Carolina primary when many were questioning whether Bill was running for a third term.  While conceding the former president is one of the most popular public figures of the 21st century, the way he forced himself into his wife’s battle, grabbing headlines, and giving impromptu interviews, was unforgivable.

10.) Hillary needs to keep pounding away at Obama for not agreeing to more debates. She can remind him of another candidate who had an aversion to debates: Richard M. Nixon.

        -Bill Lucey
            billlucey@bellsouth.net