The tone of the US presidential campaign has suddenly turned “personal”, says The Independent. At the weekend Hillary Clinton made a “startling attack” on Barack Obama for producing what she claims was a misleading leaflet on her healthcare policy, scolding him with the words, “Shame on you”.
On Tuesday night she then confronted her rival on healthcare, Nafta, Iraq and his political tactics in one of her “most pugnacious” debate performances of the campaign, said Patrick Healy in The New York Times.
But Clinton’s new belligerence reveals her desperation. Obama has won 11 consecutive contests and if Clinton fails to win the 4 March contests in Ohio and Texas, her campaign for the White House will effectively be over. Aggression isn’t a good tactic to have chosen, says The Daily Telegraph. Americans like upbeat, positive politicians: “theirs is the political culture that produced The West Wing not The Thick of It”, and Obama, unlike Clinton, is able to convey “some of the patriotism and optimism of a West Wing character”.
The pair trod familiar ground during the Tuesday debate, arguing over who has the better healthcare plan, who has been right about Iraq and who would move most aggressively to rethink trade policy as president. Both said they would threaten to opt out of the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta, the landmark pact signed 13 years ago by Bill Clinton) unless Mexico and Canada agreed to renegotiate its terms. The deal has been blamed for the rapid decline in US manufacturing in rust-belt states such as Ohio, which has lost 200,000 manufacturing jobs since 2000, says Tom Baldwin in The Daily Telegraph. “Polls suggest that it is opposed by almost three-quarters of the state’s Democrats, especially blue-collar voters upon whom Clinton is counting.”
There may be political mileage in challenging free trade, as Clinton has done, says Bronwen Maddox in The Times, but it is “dishonest, given the evidence of the overall benefit to the US”. The time has come for Hillary Clinton to “demonstrate her undeniable strengths – intelligence, ambition and resolve” – and withdraw from the contest, accepting Obama as the Democratic presidential nominee, says Stephen Graubard in the FT. She should present her withdrawal not as a personal sacrifice, but as a recognition that Republican rule, as exemplified by the Bush administration, “offers prospects too dangerous to contemplate” and that it is not in her party’s interest to prolong the contest.
By leaving the field voluntarily she gains influence and “given her undeniable gifts”, it is possible for her to become the most powerful Democratic party figure in the Senate. If Obama is elected in November, Clinton could create a memorable record on healthcare, the environment, minority rights and the economy. She could then run for the presidential nomination in 2016, or even 2012 if Obama loses to John McCain.
The only question is whether “she’ll go down ugly, or with grace”, says Margaret Wente in The Globe and Mail. Since Clinton needs overwhelming victories in Ohio and Texas, “she’s toast”. As for whether Obama can beat McCain, “how can he not?” when the Arizona senator’s natural constituency is “ageing white male republicans”. Obama connects with all people in a way we haven’t seen since Ronald Reagan or JFK. Americans are desperate for change, which makes Obama “bulletproof”.