Can anyone?

I'd like to think so. The fact is, if they both ignored eachother and focused on McCain, Obama would whomp her up onside and down the other. Indeed, it would likely already have been the case.

He certainly should. Every time the Clintons goad him into anything negative (like the Annie Oakley joke) it plays against his strongest asset -- positivism and change of the political system.

Such stuff doesn't hurt Hillary because her negatives are already stratospheric. People expect it of her.

But the bottom line is, she can't smear him enough to overcome his inevitable march to the nomination. But if he lets her dictate a low level of dialogue, it can hurt him against McBush and give Hillary her only possible chance to get close enough to con the supers into overturning the primaries.

I would love to see them both turn their attention to McCain, or failing that, at least see Obama stop wasting resources on Clinton and her never ending primary.

I think Obama could probably could still win even if he never acknowledged her campaign again. All the punditry is irrelevant, she can only win the primary  by stealing it away from the majority of states, delegates, and popular votes with a coup-de-grace.  It won't happen

But the danger would be the legitimately insulting message it would send to Clinton supporters. For reasons I will never understand, and don't need to, people still support her and would flip out if people simply started acknowledging her candidacy was dead and ignored her.

So let her ride it our as long she wants.  Obama can still just keep taking the high road.  And in the mean time, he can start working on McCain at the same time as he has been.  It is the only approach he can take.

How can he ignore an opponent who is literally within 1% of him in delegate & popular count.

How can he ignore an opponent who just beat him in 4 of the last 6 states.

How can he ignore an opponent who will very  likely beat him 4 or 5 more times before this ends?

Clinton is not Huckabee in this race.

And Obama is not McCain in this race.

Big Difference!

McCain had a whopping 7 times more delegates than Huckabee !
McCain lead Huckabee in the popular vote by a landslide margin !

You wanna try ?

Clinton keeps hitting Obama from now until June. And Obama ignores her?

Sure, watch how his numbers plunge.

  I don't mean to say he should annouce plans to have her as VP or anything, but he does need to acknowledge that Sen. Clinton has a core of loyal supporters with legitimate concerns, and yes, doubts about him as a candidate. Negativity and political scrapping is one thing, but when it comes down to the wire, we're all fighting for the same thing. If I were advising Sen. Obama, I'd say drop any and all negative references to Sen. Clinton. Point out policy differences , differences in "philosophy of implementation", yes, but concentrate all of your energy on exposing Sen. McCain for the Bush apologist/enabler that he is. Sen. Clinton has some good ideas, she's hell on wheels when it comes to a political knife-fight, not to mention the very significant voter support she has. It's time to stop chewing on each other, and start swinging on the real Bad Guys. Us Dems cannot pull this off we don't come together.

Obama for Pres/Hillary for Senate Majority Leader!!!

Dems in 08!!!

He's tried several times but the Clintons keep lobbing hand grenades at him. He's in a tough spot though because he has all of the Republicans and half the Democrats gunning for him. His two options are to focus on McCain as much as possible or drop the intra party rivalry niceties that he's trying to follow and the Clintons are ignoring and go just as nuclear as they are. Hopefully he sticks with the more positive track.

Great idea. Said strategy would further infuriate the HRC support base, leading to even more defections, while increasing her fund raising, and would lead to a drop in polls as he began GE style campaigning and stopped competing in primary states  and stopped attacking Hillary. It would further emphasize his chasm of disconnection to Clinton's support base, and his disrespect toward Hillary with this move would virtually guarantee a large amount of defectors to the McCain column if he still wins, superdelegates would see this and then award the nomination to Hillary based on electability.

So go for it!

Obama can't even unite the Democratic Party how can he unite the country? His premise is so flawed its ridiculous. He thinks entrenched power will give into him once he's in the White House, Edwards was right you have to TAKE the power from them. I do think Obama will likely win this election but he will be more like Jimmy Carter in terms of accomplishments and the GOP will have rid itself of the Bush stain by 2012 with General Petreus as their nominee

If the GOP is ignoring her, I don't see why he can't, at least in terms of decorum.  Whether or not he should is a different question.

I dunno.  Ask the professionals.

Clinton feels compelled to keep launching attacks on him, so he has to respond.  Just a few more weeks of this...

I think it would've been risky to do that while in PA, only b/c it may have come across as though he was writing the state off.

But I absolutely think he needs to do this. We need to start pointing out right now all of McCain's weaknesses.

I like the premise of this diary. I have had similar thoughts myself, mostly because I am so sick of the Dem on Dem warfare. If he tried this Clinton would claim that he was wishywashy, didn't like a fight etc. Maybe that would hurt him, but maybe it would make him look more like the candidate that took the political world by storm last fall and into Feb. I would love to see him going after McCain, raising the Dem banner high and letting Hillary do her nasty thing without a bounce card to amplify her.