There's still more than six months to go before the first presidential primaries, but with liberals dying for a distraction from the Bush administration and looking eagerly toward 2008, the Democratic debate in New Hampshire on June 3 was a partisan must-see. Not surprisingly, while all political eyes were on the eight Democratic candidates, the candidates' eyes—and their most memorable exchanges—were on Iraq.
Senator Barack Obama, fresh off a packed "Washington Kickoff" held in Seattle on June 1, scored the first sound-bite coup of the night. He smacked down former Senator John Edwards, who had complained that both Obama and Senator Hillary Clinton failed to show real end-the-war leadership when they "went quietly to the Senate floor" recently to vote against the Iraq war spending bill.
Obama, in response, noted his long-standing opposition to the Iraq war and contrasted it with Edwards's vote to authorize military action in 2002. "You're about four and a half years late on leadership on this issue," Obama said tersely.
Clinton, seated between Obama and Edwards in the dead center of the stage, and clearly trying to appear above the fray and presidential, ignored the opportunity to lock horns with Edwards over Iraq and instead, tellingly, took on Bush.
"I think it's important particularly to point out: This is George Bush's war," Clinton said. "He is responsible for this war. He started the war. He mismanaged the war. He escalated the war. And he refuses to end the war."
Having directed viewers' frustrations about the war away from the Democrats and toward Bush, Clinton then downplayed the real differences between herself and the other Democratic candidates.
"What we are trying to do," Clinton said, "whether it's by speaking out from the outside or working and casting votes that actually make a difference from the inside, we are trying to end the war... The differences among us are minor. The differences between us and the Republicans are major. And I don't want anybody in America to be confused."
Whether this "blurring" strategy will get Clinton through the primaries remains to be seen. While national polls have declared her the front-runner, local polls in early primary states have told another story, and voters in those early primary states can easily knock a candidate out of front-runner status.
An Iowa poll conducted in March and released on April 3 showed Edwards in the lead among likely Iowa caucus voters, with Clinton close behind (although, in a positive sign for Clinton, she led Edwards among registered Democrats). In a New Hampshire poll conducted mostly in March but released two days after the debate, the percentage of likely voters who favored Clinton had fallen since February to 27 percent, while the percentage favoring Edwards—21 percent—had risen to within the poll's margin of error, with Obama close behind the two at 20 percent (Al Gore, who repeated during a Seattle appearance on June 4 that he is not even in the race for president, was polling at 11 percent).
The race for the Democratic nomination, in other words, is far from settled, and seems likely to turn, in large part, on how the candidates are seen on the Iraq issue. Although she is trying to blur differences—past and present—on Iraq, Clinton's lack of a direct admission of error on her vote to authorize force against Iraq in 2002 continues to dog her.
At the debate, when Mike Gravel, the former Alaska senator now making a long-shot run for the nomination, suggested that Clinton and Edwards should be disqualified because of their 2002 votes, Clinton was back on the defensive.
"Americans died because of their decision," Gravel said. "That disqualifies them... It doesn't mean they're bad people. It just means that they don't have moral judgment. And that's very important when you become president."
While Edwards had his 2005 admission of error on the Iraq war vote to protect him, Clinton had to fall back on her complicated nonadmission. "I have said repeatedly that if I had known then what I know now, I never would have voted to give the president authority [to wage war against Iraq]," she replied, adding that she was not "necessarily" wrong to vote the way she did "at the time." What was wrong, Clinton said, "is the way this president misused the authority that some of us here gave him."
Obama, who could have pounced, declined to go for another hard punch on this issue by repeating that he had been right all along. Instead, he retreated to his trademark magnanimity, which, although clearly appealing, has yet to put him in first place, either nationally or in state polls.
"I don't think it's a disqualifier," he said of the Clinton and Edwards votes on Iraq. 
