Clinton, Obama Recast Their Message on Iraq

In the six months before the November 2006 elections, 416 American troops were killed in Iraq. In the six months ending Feb. 24, the death toll was 244.

"It's not as front-burner, because the violence has been down," said Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.), who made the war central to his message as the Democratic presidential nominee in 2004 and is now campaigning for Obama. "It doesn't mean that people believe we should be there forever, but it doesn't have that urgent, chaotic definition to it."

A year ago, as the Democrats began to campaign, the war was front and center in the heartland. Funeral by funeral, voters of all kinds were losing faith in President Bush and the war effort.

As the Democratic candidates labored to distinguish themselves from one another, they often defined themselves by their view of the invasion before it happened. Clinton and former senator John Edwards (N.C.) voted in 2002 to authorize the war. Clinton defended her vote; Edwards apologized for his.

Obama was in the Illinois state senate. He pointed then, as he does now, to an October 2002 speech in which he opposed the invasion, calling it "a dumb war, a rash war." The war was central to mailings in Iowa and early canvassing there. His campaign thinks his position caused many voters, especially young people, to take a close look at his candidacy.

"I think it's a fair analysis that the war has helped Obama more than it has helped Clinton in the Democratic primary," said Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute. "He is purer on that question."

But on the campaign trail, the distinctions about what the candidates would do next in Iraq have become blurred.

"They quibble over which one didn't show up to which vote, but their policies are the same," said Jody Young, an Army reservist and federal prosecutor in Brownsville, Tex., who listened as Kerry backed Obama. "I would like to think we can win honorably or at least remove ourselves honorably, the Vietnam mantra."

The candidates, mirroring the mood, increasingly talk about the war in terms that stretch beyond the fighting itself, making its conduct a bridge to domestic issues.

In domestic terms, the candidates point to the war's cost, suggesting that taxpayer money directed to Iraq could make a difference at home if it were invested in the nation's battered roads and bridges or spent on schools and social services.

The argument makes sense to Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), who has heard about the war's budgetary impact while listening to constituents at 85 roundtables since early 2007. He said he hears from business owners and government officials that federal support for such things as police and utility improvements is drying up.

"They are starting to understand this economically," said Brown, who defeated Republican incumbent Mike DeWine in 2006 with a message that touched on the war, the economy and corruption. "They are seeing that, because of tax cuts and because of the immense cost of the war, they aren't getting what they need locally."