Clinton Now Under Pressure To Bounce Back Against Foes

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The New York Sun

WASHINGTON — The pressure will be on Senator Clinton at the Democratic presidential debate tomorrow as she tries to bounce back from a weak performance last month that has cut into her lead in the polls.

Her top rivals, Senator Obama and John Edwards, head into the Las Vegas forum confident that their increased criticism in recent weeks finally has begun to inflict damage on Mrs. Clinton’s campaign, which had seemed unstoppable earlier in the fall.

Messrs. Obama and Edwards have painted her as a creature of a corrupt corporate culture in Washington who is more concerned about her political standing than she is about principles, and that image has been fed in recent days by disclosures that the Clinton campaign has “planted” questioners at two of its town-hall forums in Iowa.

Acknowledging that the dynamic of the race has shifted, Mrs. Clinton is using the attacks as a fund-raising tool. Her campaign manager, Patti Solis Doyle, yesterday sent out a missive to supporters urgently seeking donations in a bid to raise $1 million by the start of the debate tomorrow night.

“The campaign has changed,” Ms. Solis Doyle wrote at the top of the e-mail. “You’ve probably noticed the shift. Our opponents are on the attack. But while they’re attacking Hillary, she’s attacking the problems facing America.”

At the last Democratic debate on October 30 in Philadelphia, Mrs. Clinton stumbled in answering a question about whether she supported Governor Spitzer’s plan to give driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants. Her position was highly nuanced at best and indecipherable at worst, playing into criticism from her rivals that she ducked difficult issues.

While she maintains a comfortable lead over Messrs. Obama and Edwards, some polls have showed a dip of several points in her support, and even Mrs. Clinton conceded she wasn’t at her best in Philadelphia.

A commanding performance tomorrow night would give Mrs. Clinton her best chance to silence her doubters and halt her modest slide in the polls.

“I’m expecting her to hold her own,” a Democratic political consultant, Hank Sheinkopf, said. He said Messrs. Obama and Edwards likely would stay on the offensive while Mrs. Clinton would stick to her game plan of “pivot and deflect” when she is attacked.

“The tactic she has used has worked,” Mr. Sheinkopf said.

The debate will be broadcast on CNN, with Wolf Blitzer moderating.

Mrs. Clinton may not be the only candidate on the receiving end of criticism, however. In a long memo released yesterday, Mr. Obama’s campaign manager, David Plouffe, not only went after Mrs. Clinton but also Mr. Edwards, writing that he had shifted on “many core issues” since he first ran for president in 2004.

“It’s admirable to admit mistakes but John Edwards has apologized for most of his record while in the Senate,” Mr. Plouffe wrote, citing the issues of trade, education, and most notably, the war in Iraq.

Wanting to keep its focus on Mrs. Clinton, the Edwards campaign did not respond directly, but privately aides were relishing the attack from the Obama camp, viewing it as an affirmation that Mr. Edwards is succeeding in preventing the nomination fight from becoming a two-candidate race.

In another sign of how combative the campaign has become, Mr. Edwards was forced to backtrack yesterday after the New York Times reported that he had twice refused to say whether he would support the front-running Mrs. Clinton if she won the Democratic nomination.

That prompted a Democratic rival, Senator Dodd of Connecticut, to chastise Mr. Edwards and urge him to pledge his support for the party’s nominee, regardless of who it was. “I am surprised at just how angry John has become,” Mr. Dodd said in a statement. “This is not the same John Edwards I once knew.”

A spokesman for the Clinton campaign responded: “Senator Clinton has supported Democrats her entire adult life. We are confident that she will be the nominee, but if she isn’t, she will support the Democratic nominee.”

At a campaign stop in New Hampshire yesterday, Mr. Edwards clarified his sentiments, but without mentioning Mrs. Clinton by name. “I fully expect to support the Democratic nominee, and I fully expect to be the Democratic nominee,” he said, according to his campaign.

Also yesterday, the former North Carolina senator released a television ad in Iowa that highlights his promise to try to cut off health coverage for members of Congress if they don’t pass a universal health care bill in the first six months of his term. Mr. Edwards had first proposed the idea in September, and his campaign said he would try to implement the threat through legislation if he became president.

His rivals derided the move as a political stunt that was probably unconstitutional and surely impractical, given that lawmakers would be unlikely to cut off their own health coverage. “In 2004, John Edwards was critical of other Democrats for proposing universal health care. Now he says he’ll get it done by employing an unconstitutional tactic,” a Clinton spokesman, Phil Singer, said. “That’s not the way we’re going to get universal health care in America We’ll get universal health care by electing someone who has the strength and experience to actually get it done.”


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