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Amid Restraint, President Clinton Takes Swing or Two at Obama
Posted by Josh Gerstein
Mon, 4 Feb 2008 at 7:04 PM
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President Clinton barnstormed through California today pressing the case for his wife on the eve of tomorrow's Super Tuesday primary, but he couldn't help taking a couple of swings at her rival for the Democratic nomination, Senator Obama of Illinois.
Mr. Clinton's most direct swipe at Mr. Obama came at a early morning event at a community college in Santa Ana, Calif. "You will either vote for a candidate who will provide quality, affordable health care for all Americans or one who thinks it's not that important," the former president said. Speaking to several hundred students and others, many of them Latino, Mr. Clinton seemed to compare his wife to Robert Kennedy when he called Kennedy "a politician that all the establishment said was ruthless and and calculating," but who demonstrated uncommon concern for the rural poor and for migrant farmworkers.
Mr. Clinton gently contrasted his wife with he-who-must-not-be-named, by saying she would "deliver" and would be "a president who can execute good ideas."
On a day when some saw Mrs. Clinton tear up again on the campaign trail, Mr. Clinton spoke of her emotions decade ago when she studied child abuse at the Yale Hospital in New Haven, Conn. "She would come in in tears there, crying about kids being brought in the hospital with cigarette burns on their arms. Kids who had not been fed for 10 days or two weeks," the former president said. He said the scenes motivated his wife to work on proposals for greater legal protections for children.
Mr. Clinton stopped in Sacramento at lunchtime, where he was greeted by a crowd of about 1000, according to the Associated Pres. In the afternoon, he was in Stockton, Calif., where several thousand people attended a hastily arranged rally at the University of the Pacific. He honed in on the subprime mortgage crisis, which is severe in cities like Stockton. Mr. Clinton said his wife's plan to keep people in their homes is "much more aggressive than any of the other candidates" and would stave off what he warned would be a "calamitous collapse" of the housing market. "She is a world class genius at making positive change in other people's lives," he declared. There were also a couple of elbows for Mr. Obama, such as a passing reference to an alternative health plan that would "leave 20 million people out and waste a lot of money that we shouldn't waste."
After being among the first to predict the victory of Michael Huckabee in the Iowa Republican caucuses, Mr. Clinton seems to have soured on the chances for the fellow child of Hope, Ark. "There are now only four candidates left for president: two Democrats and two Republicans," Mr. Clinton said, apparently pushing Mr. Huckabee out of the viable Republican field.
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