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Tales from the Trail

Tracking the 2008 U.S. campaign

October 30th, 2007

Top Democratic presidential hopefuls focus on tweaking each other

Posted by: Jeremy Pelofsky
Tags: Tales from the Trail: 2008

It’s not every day you see Democratic presidential hopefuls Barack Obama and John Edwards on the front-runner Hillary Clinton’s Web site.
 
But that’s what her campaign has done, putting up videos of Obama from earlier this year and one from Edwards in 2004 when they spoke of the virtues of positive campaigning.
 
The idea is to contrast their positive comments then with their negative remarks now about Clinton, given that she has a large lead over them in national polls.
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Obama and Edwards are now more directly challenging Clinton as a way to gain ground since they have trailed her for much of the year.
    
Beneath the videos, Clinton’s campaign included links to news articles from the past couple days about Obama and Edwards shifting their tactics. Typically, Clinton rarely if ever mentions the two by name while on the campaign trail and mostly just responds to issues raised by Obama.
    
Obama last weekend argued in Iowa that Clinton had been dodging questions about how to strengthen the Social Security retirement program and her campaign quickly responded by putting up a television advertisement in Iowa and New Hampshire detailing her record on Social Security.

The Obama campaign declined to comment but Edwards spokeswoman Colleen Murray offered a rebuttal.

“In 2008 John Edwards is saying if you are looking for the candidate who will defend a corrupt, broken system in Washington while 47 million Americans go without health care and 37 million Americans live in poverty, then he’s not your guy,” she said.

Let’s see if they mix it up more tonight at the Democratic debate in Philadelphia.

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