Candidates go on the attack in Ohio showdown

Obama picking up momentum
The showdown Tuesday night was the last head-to-head meeting between the Democratic front-runners before 370 delegates go up for grabs March 4, when Rhode Island and Vermont join Ohio and Texas in holding primaries.

Suggesting that it could defuse one of the hottest issues throughout the campaign, supporters of both candidates pointed to Clinton’s explicit admission — apparently for the first time — that she wished she could “take back” her original vote in 2002 to authorize the war in Iraq.

Lisa Caputo, a former spokeswoman for Clinton, said she thought Clinton’s comment was “consistent” with her past statements that she would not vote the same way now. But “it’s probably linguistically the furthest she’s taken it,” Caputo acknowledged.

David Wilhelm, a supporter of Obama who was chairman of Bill Clinton’s successful 1992 presidential campaign, was more direct, saying, “It sounded like new ground to me.”

But the clash over NAFTA was the keynote of the debate as Clinton seeks to blunt Obama’s momentum, and the Rev. Jesse Jackson, an Obama supporter, did not think the exchange worked out well for her.

“I thought Barack was especially strong on trade,” Jackson said of Obama, who has won the last 11 primaries or caucuses. In doing so, Obama has pulled ahead of Clinton in many national polls and edged slightly ahead in most news organizations’ counts of delegates to the Democratic National Convention.

The Clinton campaign has consistently acknowledged that it must do well in Ohio and Texas, where she had, until recently, enjoyed large leads in public opinion polls, to have a realistic shot at taking the nomination, but the latest surveys ahead of the debate were not promising.

Obama pulled to within 6 percentage points of Clinton in an Ohio poll released Tuesday, trailing 50 percent to 44 percent. He trailed by 9 points in the same poll last week and 17 points two weeks ago in a state that the Clinton campaign has long seen as a “firewall” against Obama’s surging popularity.

The poll, conducted for NBC affiliates WKYC of Cleveland and WCMH of Columbus by SurveyUSA, questioned 790 likely voters Saturday through Monday. It reported a margin of sampling error of 3.6 percentage points.

Clinton seeks to ‘change the dynamic’
Obama’s gains were even more dramatic in Texas, where he has overtaken Clinton in the past week, according to a Texas poll released Tuesday.

The poll of 704 likely Texas Democratic voters, also conducted by SurveyUSA, found Obama leading by 49 percent to 45 percent, with a reported 3.8 percentage-point margin of error. Clinton led the same poll last week, 50 percent to 45 percent.

The Texas poll showed dramatic inroads by Obama into Clinton’s lead among Latino voters, which he cut from 33 points to 13 points in just a single week. Similarly, Clinton’s lead among female voters — 27 points last week — was down to 11 points Tuesday.

Wilhelm said Clinton had “a tough job” ahead of her.

“She’s got to change the dynamic of the race,” Wilhelm said in an interview on MSNBC’s “Hardball.” “But she’s got to do it in a year when people want to put an end to squabbling, want to put an end to bickering. ... How, in that context, do you change the dynamic of this race?”

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