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

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."

For Clinton, who supported the 2002 resolution authorizing the U.S. invasion and then defended the mission long after the initial combat phase ended, the pledge to stop the war represented another break with Bush's Iraq policies.

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."

Obama stated that he had repeatedly spoken out against the war before the invasion in 2003, but he pitched most of his message in a different direction. Warning that campaigns should be about more than skeletons in the candidates' closets and gaffes along the way, he urged Democrats to fight against the cynicism that he said has turned politics into a blood sport and has blocked consensus and cooperation on solving the country's problems.

"There are those who don't believe in talking about hope," he said. "They say, 'Well, we want specifics, we want details and we want white papers, we want plans.' We've had lots of plans, Democrats. What we've had is a shortage of hope. And over the next year, over the next two years, that will be my call to you."

The audience that filled the large ballroom at the Hilton Washington Hotel whooped and cheered and often rose to their feet in response to the candidates' rhetoric.

Besides the three front-runners, three other candidates also spoke yesterday: Connecticut Sen. Christopher J. Dodd, a former general chairman of the DNC, and two veterans of the 2004 campaign, retired Army Gen. Wesley K. Clark and Ohio Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich.

Today, the Democrats will hear from Delaware Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr., whose campaign began in controversy and apology this week over a comment in which he described Obama as "articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy." Others on today's schedule include New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, former Iowa governor Tom Vilsack and former Alaska senator Mike Gravel.

Yesterday's speakers refrained from attacking each other, using the forum as a brief opportunity to sound the main themes of their campaigns and distinguish themselves from their rivals.

Clinton described herself to party leaders as the Democrat best equipped to take on the Republicans in 2008. "I know a thing or two about winning campaigns," she said. "When our party and our candidates are attacked, we have got to stand up and fight back. . . . I know how they think, how they act and how to defeat them."

The candidates agreed on expanding health care and reducing dependence on foreign oil, but at times, yesterday's event sounded like an echo of candidate forums in 2003-04, with Iraq still the dominant issue and the Democrats debating what to do next.

Dodd, the leadoff speaker, demanded that Democrats, who now control Congress, do more than pass a nonbinding resolution on Iraq that is soon to be up for debate.

"Frankly, I am disappointed that we can't find a way to do more than send a meaningless message to the White House -- a White House, I would add, that has said it will ignore anything that we have to say about the war in Iraq," Dodd said. "The American people sent us a message this past November; the voters were clear. They want a change in the policy in Iraq."

Edwards, who made no reference to his initial support for the war while he was in the Senate, called for Democrats to block the troop buildup, quoting the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s words during the Vietnam War that "silence is betrayal." But he said the White House is counting on Democrats not to fight the new deployments.

"They don't think we have the backbone and courage to stand up to them," he said. "They don't think we are in this to stop the escalation of this war and to bring our men and women home from Iraq. They're counting on us to be weak, to be political and to be careful. This is not the time for political calculation."

Clinton defended efforts to pass a bipartisan, nonbinding resolution putting Congress on record in opposition to the president's new plan. To scattered antiwar protests, she said, "There are many people who wish we could do more, but let me say that if we can get a large, bipartisan vote to disapprove this president's plan for escalation, that will be the first time that we will have said no to President Bush and began to reverse his policies."

Obama, who called this week for combat troops to be out of Iraq by March 31, 2008, said criticism of the president alone is no longer a sufficient strategy for Democrats. "It was enough to run against George Bush during this past congressional election," he said. "It will not be enough now. . . . Every candidate for office in the next election should put forward in clear, unambiguous, uncertain terms exactly how they plan to get out of Iraq."

Clark, who has not set up a campaign committee, offered sharp criticism of the administration for "condoning torture, using rendition and these secrete detention camps, by creating a sense of callous disregard for the innocent lives lost in that conflict and by taking us to an unnecessary war in the first place."

Kucinich, who opposed the war, said Congress now should end it by cutting off funds. "Democrats have an obligation to reclaim Congress's constitutional power to end the war," he said.