Viva Las Vegas: After the debate
Posted: Friday, November 16, 2007 9:24 AM by Mark Murray
Following the debate, the Democratic presidential hopefuls rallied 2,200 Nevada Democrats at the Clark County Jefferson Jackson dinner, NBC’s Christina Jamison reports. The headline: Clinton spent her time going after Republicans, while Obama spent his time going after her. Obama, in fact, used a good portion of his allotted seven minutes taking thinly veiled shots at Clinton, repeating much of what he said last weekend at the Iowa J-J dinner. "It is not enough to just run the old textbook Washington campaign" and "telling the American people what we think they want to hear instead of what they need to hear just won't do. Poll testing our positions because we're afraid of what Mitt or Rudy might say about us just won't do." He went on to say America needs the Democrats to be "a party that doesn't just focus on how to win, but why we should; a party that doesn't just offer changes of slogan, but offers real and meaningful change."
Clinton -- despite answering a question at the debate over how she planned to bring the country together -- used her time to attack Republicans, saying: "We're gonna draw a stark distinction with the Republicans" and "we have to undo the damage of the Bush years, but then we have to have a positive agenda." She also energized the crowd, tapping several times into her "Turn up the Heat.” Edwards, meanwhile, stuck close to his traditional stump speech and refrained from attacking Clinton and Obama.
The Clinton supporters easily doubled those of the nearest rival, Obama’s. On a lighter note, Sens. Dodd and Biden must be sharing speechwriters... Both joked that they got seven minutes to speak, which, they said, was more than CNN gave them. Unfortunately for Biden, he spoke right after Dodd.
But as NBC's Lauren Appelbaum notes, Biden's critique didn't make sense, since he received a robust 10-plus minutes of time, on par with Edwards.
