Obama must attack Hillary; he also can't attack her

Obama is in a pickle. He can't attack Hillary without denting his golden boy image. Obama resisted attacking for exactly this reason. But he also has problems attacking Hillary in general.

Johnathan Chait hits the nail on the head:

While [Hillary] likes to claim that she beat the Republican attack machine, it's more accurate to say that she survived with heavy damage... But, because she earned the intense loyalty of core Democratic partisans, Obama has to tread gingerly around her vulnerabilities. There is a big bundle of ethical issues from the 1990s that Obama has not raised because he can't associate himself with what partisan Democrats (but not Republicans or swing voters) regard as a pure GOP witch hunt.

What's more, Clinton has benefited from a favorable gender dynamic that won't exist in the fall. (In the Democratic primary, female voters have outnumbered males by nearly three to two.) Clinton's claim to being a tough, tested potential commander-in-chief has gone almost unchallenged. Obama could reply that being First Lady doesn't qualify you to serve as commander-in-chief, but he won't quite say that, because feminists are an important chunk of the Democratic electorate. John McCain wouldn't be so reluctant.

The second part of the pickle is that Obama has to attack. He has to. People have to be reminded of the Clinton negatives if he's going to win.

Here's Hillary's argument to Obama on why she's more electable, according to Noah Millman: Obama's lost Democrats overall, working-class whites, key swing states like Ohio and Florida, and he is polling losing them in the general election too.

That is a convincing argument. Obama's "respect the process, I got more votes" is uninspired if lacks all momentum coming out of OH, Texas, and PA. Hillary's is the smarter argument, because it is grounded in the turnout-the-base theory of elections rather than the woo-the-independents theory. The latter is bunk, in my view, in an election year so heavily tilted towards the Democrats. Play it safe. Go with the known quantity. Ride the dissatisfaction to victory by turning out your base and the legions of voters disaffected with the Republicans.

So Obama has to attack. It will have to be done carefully and indirectly and by surrogates. But it could get very nasty quickly.