Playing Nice

Via Marc Ambinder, Ron Brownstein runs down the new source of Hillary Clinton's strength -- a surge in support from college educated women, previously a block that was split about evenly between her and Obama. What's more, hot on the heels of this morning's Mark Penn-bashing it seems to me that Penn's explanation for the surge adds up:

Penn argues that Clinton's upscale support has grown mostly because the campaign debate has shifted this fall from experience to the candidates' issue agendas, such as the universal health care plan that Clinton unveiled last month.

Indeed. Generalizing from the first person case, I was very skeptical of Clinton initially, then went on to not really buy the "experience" argument that by all accounts non-college voters find persuasive, but was very pleasantly surprised by her health care proposal. And given that her plan is as good or better than her rivals' offering, now the experience argument plays as more compelling. I will say, though, that I keep being surprised that she doesn't seem to have a climate change policy and as I guess is typical of male college educated Democrats I still find myself more drawn to Obama, but I definitely think better of the prospect of a Clinton administration than I once did.