Newsweek’s Clift must be feeling better

Just a month ago, Newsweek’s Eleanor Clift, one of the most reliable of the media’s Reliable Dems for Obama, was worried.

Democrats might hurt their election chances because – well, because Sen. Obama and the Dems just brim with “high-mindedness,”Ms. Clift fretted.

This from her Aug. 15 column:

… [Emory University psychology professor Drew Westen] credits Obama with wanting to run a different kind of campaign but says that Democrats have it in their DNA to avoid confrontation and then rationalize their aversion to negative attacks as high-mindedness.

The Obama team, by failing to fully exploit McCain's vulnerabilities--that he's not really a straight talker, that he's four more years of Bush--has unwittingly allowed their candidate to become the sole focus of the campaign.

"Because Obama is so bent on running a positive campaign, the campaign is about him. There's been no real effort to define McCain to the American people," [says Westen.] …

Clift and professor Westen needn’t have worried for today we read in the Newsport News Free Press:

Democrat Barack Obama lambasted Republican John McCain's campaign for "lies, phony outrage and Swift Boat politics" at Granby high School on Wednesday in response to the latest brouhaha on the campaign trail

McCain's campaign seized on a comment Obama made at a town hall meeting Tuesday in Lebanon, when Obama said, "you can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig" in describing McCain's economic strategy. …

And yesterday from the WSJ’s John Fund post “The Hunt for Sarah October:”

Democrats understand Sarah Palin is a formidable political force who has upset the Obama victory plan. The latest Washington Post/ABC Poll shows John McCain taking a 12-point lead over Barack Obama among white women, a reversal of Mr. Obama's eight-point lead last month.

It's no surprise, then, that Democrats have airdropped a mini-army of 30 lawyers, investigators and opposition researchers into Anchorage, the state capital Juneau and Mrs. Palin's hometown of Wasilla to dig into her record and background. My sources report the first wave arrived in Anchorage less than 24 hours after John McCain selected her on August 29. …

Professor Westen may be a little pained right now and busy revising his “Obama is so bent on running a positive campaign” lecture.

But Eleanor Clift must be feeling better and expecting Obama's poll numbers to rise.

Clift’s column’s here; the Free Press story’s here; and the WSJ’s Fund’s post’s here.