Analysis: Clinton comes out swinging

Analysis: Clinton comes out swinging


MANCHESTER, N.H. - Hillary Rodham Clinton lost the luxury to be polite along with the Iowa caucuses. On the ropes after a third-place finish, Clinton came out swinging against new Democratic front-runner Barack Obama with a vigor she hadn't shown before in the contest she used to lead. She argued that she is the candidate who deserves the mantle of change and not this newcomer Obama.

"I'm not just running on a promise of change. I'm running on 35 years of change," she said in Saturday's Democratic debate, raising her voice and jabbing her finger on the podium to underscore her point.
In return, Clinton got Obama and John Edwards ganging up on her. Edwards apparently decided if he can't beat Obama in New Hampshire, he'll try to join him.
"Both of us are powerful voices for change," Edwards said, rising to Obama's defense. "And if I might add, we finished first and second in the Iowa caucus, I think in part as a result of that."
Edwards didn't mention he only beat Clinton out for second place by three-tenths of a percentage point. But he's calculated that if he can force Clinton out of the race, he might have a chance of beating Obama in a two-man contest.
He has only three days before the New Hampshire primary to make up a lot of ground. A CNN/WMUR poll released Saturday found Clinton and Obama tied at 33 percent each in the state, with Edwards trailing at 20 percent.
After nearly a year of ignoring her rivals when she was on top, Clinton struck back at Edwards as being all talk and no action. She accused Obama of changing his positions and having an inferior health care plan. And again, she rose to the night's buzzword.
"I am an agent of change," she said. "I embody change. I think having the first woman president is a huge change."
All the talk stems from the results in Iowa: 51 percent of those going into the Democratic caucuses said electing someone who can bring change was most important to them, and half of those caucus-goers voted for Obama, with Edwards and Clinton each getting one-fifth. Only 20 percent said electing a candidate with the right experience was most important.
Obama's brightest moment in the presidential debate aired nationwide on ABC came before he even stepped on the stage: He became the focus of a Republican dispute about the best way to run against him. The Republican candidates, appearing just before the Democrats, said they would run against Obama's liberal positions and his lack of experience, but Iowa victor Mike Huckabee warned that Obama has tapped into a desire for new leadership.
"He has excited a lot of voters in this country," Huckabee said. "We'd better be careful as a party, because if we don't give people something to be for, and only something to be against, we're going to lose that next election."