I do have to chuckle when I hear complaints in recent days that Hillary Clinton has gone negative against Barack Obama, or that the Democratic race has taken a negative turn.

Sure, the Clinton Camp has definitely turned up the heat in recent days.  They have targeted Obama over his plans on campaign financing for the general election, his refusal to debate in the days leading up to the Wisconsin Primary and tried to make hay out of charges that Obama has been borrowing the words of Deval Patrick, the Governor of Massachusetts.

Now, each one of those is more of a Jab than a Smear, but it has been interesting to hear some anectdotal and real evidence that these attacks aren't helping Hillary, and instead may be convincing some voters to go for Obama.

Really "negative" campaigning would be hitting below the belt, peddling scandal type stuff and/or just making wild charges in hopes that the other guy might finally lose his cool. We haven't seen any of that, at least not yet.

But what we may be seeing is that Hillary Clinton is having to play by a different set of rules, in essence. Maybe the Clinton Memories have hit some voters in such a manner that they don't have much of a tolerance for Hillary trying to claw her way back into the race, because that requires her to more harshly compare her record with Obama's.

It would be nice to think that we might have some fireworks, maybe along the lines of the 1988 battle between then Senator Bob Dole and then Vice President George Bush, when Dole famously said to Bush, "Stop lying about my record."

But I sort of get the feeling that Hillary Clinton has been around for so long and is so well known, that maybe Democratic voters are okay with her if she's winning the race for the party's nomination, but that they aren't interested in her going after Obama in order to start a comeback and win.

Not much has stuck to Obama so far. The "plagiarism" story of the past few days did draw a good amount of media attention in recent days, but on its own, that won't Sink Obama or anything, unless it is just the tip of some unknown iceberg..

Hillary Clinton now has two weeks to turn things around in Ohio and Texas.  There are no more excuses.  You either win on March 4th or that's it.  I've made my plane reservations for Texas to watch it in person.