Clinton steps up 11th-hour attacks on Obama
chron.com
By BILL LAMBRECHT
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
March 3, 2008, 7:19PM
WASHINGTON — Hillary Rodham Clinton hoped that a fusillade of late attacks on Barack Obama heading into pivotal primaries in Texas and Ohio on Tuesday will yield enough success to carry the race for the Democratic presidential nomination beyond this week and into spring.
Meanwhile, John McCain looked to sew up the race for the GOP nomination with victories over Mike Huckabee. Besides delegate-rich Texas and Ohio, Vermont and Rhode Island also hold primary contests Tuesday.
With little margin for error, Clinton stepped up a range of attacks, including ads questioning whether Obama has the experience to protect families in the event of an international crisis. Campaigning in Ohio, she predicted she would do "very well" Tuesday and was pointing to the Pennsylvania primary on April 22.
"I'm just getting warmed up," she told reporters, adding that "hard-fought primary contests are a part of American politics."
Clinton held leads in most Ohio polls, although Obama had cut those margins significantly in recent weeks. Surveys in Texas pointed to an outcome too close to call. Texas held the added potential of confusion Tuesday night because delegates are awarded both in a primary and in caucuses to follow in the evening.
The Clinton campaign hoped to plant enough doubts about Obama so that voters in Texas and Ohio give her the victories she needs to blunt Obama's recent momentum and enable the race to continue.
"There are plenty of states left, far more states than differences in delegates, and there are super-delegates who will make a final judgment as well," Clinton's chief strategist, Mark Penn, said Monday in a rosy assessment of her campaign's prospects.
Former President Clinton had offered a much more sobering analysis recently, saying his wife needed to win Texas and Ohio to keep her campaign afloat.
Obama has launched an ad barrage of his own, hoping to knock Clinton out of the race in Tuesday's primaries.
His aides argued that even narrow Clinton victories would do little to cut into the Illinois senator's 100-plus margin in pledged delegates won thus far. Obama has triumphed in 11 consecutive primaries and caucuses since Super Tuesday voting on Feb. 5 and recently has attracted more party leaders to his cause.
Obama campaign manager David Plouffe recalled that Penn and other Clinton aides had predicted last month that the remaining Democratic aspirants would be virtually tied after March 4.
"They keep moving the goalposts, but at some point, you run out of field. They have to start winning delegates and winning them quickly," he said.
Analysts agreed that Clinton is fast running out of time.
"I don't think that symbolic wins at this point suffice," said Allan Lichtman, a political historian at American University and the author of The Keys to the White House.
After Tuesday, the primary season will be down to contests in ten states, plus Guam and Puerto Rico. Clinton's short-term prospects do not appear promising. Democrats caucus in Wyoming on Saturday, but Obama has shown strength in Western caucuses. Mississippi holds its primary a week from Tuesday, but Obama also has been hard to beat in the South.
Meanwhile, McCain was fast closing in the 1,081 delegates he will need to lock up the nomination. His campaign was using the occasion to raise money in an e-mail to supporters predicting he would go "over the top" with victories Tuesday night.
McCain signaled some of the focuses in the coming general election campaign, saying that whomever Democrats choose will stand for tax increases, surrender in Iraq and "government-run health care." |
