CARPAYING THE DIEM. While Barack Obama may have won the straw poll conducted by The Politico at the Take Back America (TBA) conference, Hillary Clinton won the contest for best use of the conference — and that’s the one that really counts. While the other Democratic presidential candidates used the TBA platform simply to talk to the progressives in the room, Clinton used it to make the evening news, pegging her opening remarks to a bill the president had just vetoed that would have opened up federal funding for new embryonic stem cell research. If they know what’s good for them, Obama and John Edwards will make note of the technique of adapting one’s stump speech to the news of that very day. (Clinton had the advantage of appearing before the crowd on the very day of the veto, while Edwards and Obama appeared the day before.) Video of all the speeches is now up at the TBA Web site.
Here, I can’t resist a digression related to the post by Sister Garance on the presidential preferences of the younger Edwards. In 2000, as I followed Elizabeth Dole around New Hampshire as she campaigned for the GOP presidential nomination, I covered her appearance at a park in Portsmouth. There I stood behind a little girl and her mother as they watched Dole shake hands with her fans. “See that lady?” the mother said. “She could be the first woman president of the United States.”
The little girl pouted. “But I want to be the first woman president of the United States,” she said.
Now, I thought, we’re really getting somewhere.
–Adele M. Stan
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