President George Bush has declared her the eventual Democratic Party nominee in the 2008 Presidential Election. The public opinion polls in New Hampshire have her leading the rest of the Democratic Party field by twenty percentage points in the State. She has not experienced any further fallout from her campaign’s strange involvement with Norman Hsu. She still leads all Democrats nationwide by eighteen points according to the latest Rasmussen daily tracking poll.

So what did desperate Democratic candidates do to prepare for an event like the debate at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire on September 26, 2007? The only thing that they could do to stay alive in a race that still has three months before the first vote is cast. They joined forces on the clear leader in the polls, Hillary Clinton, and attacked. After months of question and answer sessions that pass for debates in the Democratic party, the debate last evening was the first real live evidence of what the polls have been indicating for months. The rest of the field of Democratic candidates is getting desperate in their attempt to stop Hillary Clinton from claiming the 2008 Presidential election nomination of the Democratic Party. Time is beginning to run out for them, and her large lead in the polls has been very consistent throughout 2007.

The debate did nothing to change the overall trend in the campaign, but it did cause the Hillary Clinton campaign some problems. The biggest problem seemed to be a question that moderator, Tim Russert, asked the Senator from New York. He asked whether there should be a presidential exception to allow the torture of a terror leader if authorities knew a bomb was about to go off, but didn’t know where it was. Mrs. Clinton replied about torture “ It cannot be American policy, period.” Russert revealed that ex President Bill Clinton advocated such a policy on a recent “Meet the Press” appearance. Mrs. Clinton replied “Well, I’ll talk to him later”. The problem for Mrs. Clinton is her interview last fall with the Daily News: In the interview when asked the same question, she said, "In the event we were ever confronted with having to interrogate a detainee with knowledge of an imminent threat to millions of Americans, then the decision to depart from standard international practices must be made by the President, and the President must be held accountable." Her campaign has not yet responded to questions about that contradiction.

The Democrats were also aware of a new Lake Research Poll which found that Republican Rudy Giuliani leads Mrs. Clinton by 49 per cent to 39 per cent in the swing districts in a 2008 Presidential Election match-up. The poll also found that Mrs. Clinton, in particular, could damage the chances of congressional Democratic candidates on the ballot. The Senator and former First Lady continues to try to walk a fine line. She has to strike a delicate balance between being liberal enough to continue to appeal to the anti-war Democratic primary voter, with the need to be moderate enough for the consideration of the independent voter on which a general election will turn.

With the new polling data in mind, Democratic candidates were questioning whether Hillary Clinton was too polarizing to build national consensus on issues. Her proposed healthcare system overhaul in 1993, which ended in failure, was a topic throughout the evening. She also was attacked by Democratic candidates for voting for a U.S. Senate Resolution urging the State Department to deem part of the Iranian military a terrorist organization. John Edwards tied this to her vote to authorize the Iraq war.

The debate showed the desperation of the field of Democratic candidates. They know that they are badly trailing Hillary Clinton in the race for the party’s nomination. Hillary Clinton’s performance was not one of her best. However, it appears that this debate will not significantly change the minds of many voters.

http://www.eworldvu.com

Update on Wednesday, October 10, 2007 at 11:43AM by James Smith

This is from todays Washington Post.com in an article entitled : " Clinton cites lessons of partisonship": 

"Clinton was similarly vague about how she would handle special interrogation methods used by the CIA. She said that while she does not condone torture, so much has been kept secret that she would not know unlesselected what other extreme measures interrogators are using, and therefore could not say whether she would change or continue existing policies."

What ever happened to her answer in last weeks debate to the torture question:

 "It cannot be American policy period".

That contradicted her answer last fall in the Daily News: 

  "In the event we were ever confronted with having to interrogate a detainee with knowledge of an imminent threat to millions of Americans, then the decision to depart from standard international practices must be made by the President, and the President must be held accountable."