Clinton Hostage Situation - Debate Performance in Philadelphia

Debate Performance in Philadelphia

During the course of the 2007 Democratic debates Clinton had established a reputation, even amongst her ideological opponents such as Rich Lowry, as a very solid debater who never made mistakes. However, at the October 30, 2007 MSNBC Democratic debate at Drexel University in Philadelphia, Clinton was the subject of two hours of near-continuous attacks from her Democratic rivals as well as pointed questioning from moderator Tim Russert. This was not unexpected, as leading up to the debate, Clinton had assumed a wide lead in many polls, rival Barack Obama had indicated that he was now going to be more aggressive in pointing out differences between himself and Clinton, and other leading rival John Edwards had too been increasing his statements against Clinton. Adam Nagourney of The New York Times called it "the most eagerly anticipated forum of this year."

In the debate, Clinton suffered her possible first major campaign setback when she engaged in what reporters for The Washington Post termed "a rare night of fumbles," including statements that Jake Tapper of ABC News termed "obfuscatory and less than forthright," making for what Roger Simon of The Politico called "the worst performance of her entire campaign" in which "for two hours she dodged and weaved, parsed and stonewalled." Clinton refused to commit to a position on Social Security, Illegal Immigration, the war in Iraq and the New York Governor Eliot Spitzer's bill to deliver driver's licenses to illegal immigrants. Her response on the last issue brought the most criticism, with opponent Senator Christopher Dodd and Edwards immediately saying she had contradicted herself, an assessment echoed by Margaret Carlson of Bloomberg News, who wrote that "In the course of two minutes, she gave two different answers while trying to give none at all."

Following the debate, Clinton's opponents seized on the performance. "Senator Clinton offered more of the same Washington calculation, ducking and dodging that won't bring the change America needs," said Barack Obama campaign manager David Plouffe. It also led to continued speculation by Edwards as to her electability, a theme of attackers during the debate. Clinton's own supporters conceded that her performance had not been very good. The following day, however, the Clinton campaign assembled and released a short video entitled "The Politics of Pile On", which showed her debate opponents mentioning her by name over and over. Furthermore, during a November 1 speech at her alma mater Wellesley College, she said that "In so many ways, this all-women's college prepared me to compete in the all-boys' club of presidential politics." This, combined with comments made by some supporters, including remarks by Clinton campaign manager Mark Penn against moderator Russert, led pundits to believe she was playing the "gender card". This in turn led to another round of criticism of Clinton, who had previously stressed her toughness as being one of her strengths as a potential president; Obama pointed out that he had never complained that attacks on him were due to his being African-American. On November 2, Clinton issued a clarification, stating “I don’t think they’re picking on me because I’m a woman, I think they’re picking on me because I’m winning.”. Meanwhile the Edwards campaign assembled and released a video of Clinton's contradictory debate remarks entitled "The Politics of Parsing", which Daily Kos termed "devastating". A CNN/Opinion Research Corporation national poll in the wake of the debate and its attendant publicity found Clinton with a reduced but still substantial lead over Obama and Edwards, while an NBC/Wall Street Journal national poll found her lead to be unaffected; a WNBC-TV/Marist poll found her lead slipping in first primary state New Hampshire. A week after the debate, Clinton said, "I wasn't at my best the other night. We've had a bunch of debates and I wouldn't rank that up in my very top list," but defended her desire to give nuanced responses to questions and reiterated that gender was not an issue in terms of being subjected to political attacks.