WP: DNC Turns Focus To White House

DNC Turns Focus to White House
At Party Forum, the Leading Candidates Jockey for Position

By Dan Balz and Anne E. Kornblut
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, February 3, 2007; Page A03

With Congress in their control and their eyes now on the White House, Democratic Party leaders took their first look at the party's field of presidential candidates yesterday at a forum in which the three front-runners presented their positions on Iraq and jockeyed over who can defeat the Republicans in 2008.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York presented herself as a tough, experienced pragmatist. Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois offered himself as an inspirational critic of politics as usual. And former senator John Edwards of North Carolina made himself the keeper of the Democratic flame, delivering a call for Democrats to reclaim their heritage.

Addressing the Democratic National Committee's winter meeting, Clinton put further distance between herself and President Bush on Iraq. "I want to be very clear about this," she said. "If I had been president in October of 2002, I would not have started this war. . . . If we in Congress don't end this war before January 2009, as president, I will."

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Edwards drew a rousing reception with a sharp attack on Bush's plan to send more troops to Iraq and a populist appeal for Democrats to return to their roots as defenders of the union workers, the poor and struggling middle-class families. "Brothers and sisters, in times like these, we don't need to redefine the Democratic Party," he said. "We need to reclaim the Democratic Party."

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:grr: :grr:

His speech was really stirring.

He can't do anything NOW. Something needs to be done NOW.