When Obama says "hope," that is something that his supporters walk away with. When Clinton says "experience" or "solutions" that is something she walks away with. That is not an effective counter in itself (though important things to communicate).

The key here, is she needs to sell voters on something they can walk away from the rallies and advertisements, and without any research, my preference is "confidence." Confidence that your president has the right experience, confidence that the government will create solutions that work for Americans.

The key is to create a substantive rational attachment with Americans who want to attack America's problems. Hope might get you thinking, but confidence is what gets the work done right. "Hope you can believe in," versus "confidence you can trust." (Plays against Obama's overconfidence as well)

I wish she would resurrect Harry Truman's old slogan in a way, "a fair deal." Oftentimes, Americans do not want "their problems solved" (as she phrased it today, very old school) by a President or government.  They do seem to want a government that creates conditions for them to solve their own problems, a fair deal. Her foreclosure moratorium is just such an idea, a chance for homeowners to get a fair deal. But I rarely find any indication she states or positions her proposal this way.

Honestly, she wants to resurrect programs that Truman's administration failed to achieve, starting with universal health care. Clinton's program would only need a few tweaks to really bring the whole message together. She talked about Harry Truman and health care, but he was also an advocate for civil rights long before Kennedy (who Obama has wrapped around himself). She wants to be known as a fighter (and we want her to fight), so why not remind people of Give-em-hell Harry Truman by claiming his mantle as her own (as she fights from way behind).

That would really make this about party or personality (which is how I see it). Obama's whole program is not built from a political philosophy, it is more like a post-structural collage of poll-tested hot button issues (the Clintons, Iraq War, and, more recently, NAFTA, being at the top of his list). So we have one candidate who pitches himself as the unique means to build an electoral  coalition around opposition to both political parties' policies from the past 20 years.  

One candidate who pitches herself as the defender of long-standing Democratic legacy and policies who wants to build a coalition around unfinished work to give Americans a fair deal in a global world. Clinton's program could be characterized as the legacies of a fondly remembered Democrat (by both Dems, Inds, and Reps) and a Democratic party that created the affluent fifties.

I could not imagine they would insist on making the same mistake again so it's more likely (to me) that the experience argument wins her some votes as opposed to hurting.

Who knows?  Maybe Obama would have surged even higher and the blowout wins would have been greater had she not been talking about experience.

I will reserve my judgement on this until I hear her policy speech tommorrow.  The tone will be key.

Being president is not being a legislator. Legislative experience is not seen, by the average person, as direct evidence of potential competence as president. Indirectly, yes - in the sense that you know how things work. But that strikes me as a threshold question, not a scale of acceptability.

As has been said often, experinece, especially legislative experience, has not been seen in this campaign to count for very much at all. Joe Biden has 36 years in the Senate and it didnt earn him one delegate.

People look to a president for vision. A direction they want to take the country. Showing off a facility with the grunt work of passing legislation qualifies you for a prize as super legislator, but it doesnt tranlate necessarily to the executive branch.

I think the experience thing can be a strong supporting argument - to support a basic vision-message. Hillary is good at the laundry list of progressive items, but she hasn't been packaging it in an overarching vision.

Obama gives people a larger vision - of citizen involvement to advance a common purpose and counteract special interests, a change from the standard ways of Washington etc. Hillary offers a competence at fighting within the established system. I don't mean this as a point for argumentation - its just a perception of how the two candidates come across.

Listing her accomplishments, and highlighting how well she works in the system is fundamentally off key from a population that craves a shake-up in Washington.

If anyone took this infantile rhetoric seriously, it would be insulting and demeaning to use this type of rhetoric about a 47 year old man even if all he ever had accomplished was becoming president of the Harvard Law Review.