The Hill reports that is how the Obama camp sees it.

A top adviser for Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) said Friday that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), the front-runner for her party’s presidential nomination, is obsessed “with what she calls the Republican attack machine.”

“I think we need a candidate who is obsessed with unifying this country again,” said Obama adviser David Axelrod. He added that Obama could break “the sort of decades-long battle we’ve had over this jagged divide — red state, blue state, American against American — and try to bring people together and attract disaffected Republicans and attract independent voters so that we could build not just a victory, but a governing coalition in this country.”

If I were an advisor to the Obama campaign, which I am not and I doubt they would want me, but if I were this is something that would really worry me. I understand the Senator is attempting to create this ‘new kind’ of politics. However this ‘new kind of politics’ sounds exactly the same the ‘new kind of politics’ Al Gore & John Kerry ran their campaigns on. The ‘we are above this’ mentality that had Gore demolished and Kerry, a Vietnam Vet, basically called a traitor who lied about his war record.

There seems to be a pervading notion in the blogosphere and on the far-left that Democrats are going to waltz into the White House this cycle. I keep seeing article after article and blog post after blog post noting Clinton being unpopular with conservative Republicans and conservative independents as a sign that she isn’t going to fair well in the general election. There seems to be some kind of notion that Obama will be able to court conservatives who don’t like the president.

Note to the Obama campaign. Talk to some of these people, I do. They aren’t mad at the president because he is too conservative. They are made at the president because he is too liberal.

Senator Obama is in for a rude awakening if he enters the general election with the notion that he will be able to keep the rhetoric positive and not get his hands dirty. There will be endless signs, not unlike the ones Mitt Romney has been spotted near, that will read Osama Obama or some variation. Republicans will paint his early upbringing as one where he was taught in a madrasah, they will hit him as inexperienced and weak on defense.

Republican operatives will tell voters he will bankrupt America by raising taxes, the race card will be played by surrogates, ads will be run like those against Harold Ford Jr., allegations will be made about his family life whether true or not, rumors will be spread through push-polling, details from his book about his use of drugs will be exploited, every vote cast in the Senate and everything he did in the Illinois legislature will be scrutinized. The general campaign will put endless pressure on him and his family, his wife will be framed in several different unappealing ways, his family members will be tracked down all over the globe and exploited.

At the moment things are somewhat quiet on the politics of personal destruction front. It is August and over a year out before election day. The GOP ‘Attack Machine’ is also known as politics, it is nothing new or necessarily ominous, it is effective. Ignoring attacks like John Kerry did or allowing the party to demolish your record while you take the high road and talk about the future like Al Gore did won’t get you far.

There is a wonderful documentary about the first Clinton campaign against George Bush Sr. called The War Room. There is a news clip in it I often think about when I see Bill Clinton and Bush Sr. together. In it Bush is on fire, he is scorning democrats and yelling about “whiny liberals” and the ACLU etc. It is a big departure of most visions of Bush as a calm elder statesman. It is a man campaigning and trying like hell to win.

Then there is the Clinton team in the documentary, sitting in the background, hitting back hard against every allegation, fighting off every attack, working overtime to frame the opposition in the worst light as possible. Everything said about them hits hard but not in a personal way, in a way that fires them up and fuels them to fight back even more. It is a look into how elections are won, especially after many years of defeat.

I wouldn’t mind seeing a world where we all get along and government ALWAYS works for the people. That isn’t the world we have though and it isn’t the world we are going to get any time soon. I hope for their sake the Obama campaign realizes that because if they run another Al Gore/John Kerry campaign they are going to disappoint a lot of people and help ensure another loss for the Democratic Party.