News

Front-runners campaign in Mass. on primary eve

Standing before a college gymnasium packed with 4,500 campaign supporters yesterday, Sen. Hillary Clinton emphatically nodded along to a laundry list of George Bush’s presidential failures and her own executive office qualifications, as recited by supporter Rep. Jim McGovern.

Clinton’s bold yellow jacket belied staged ebullience, but as she spoke her first words to the crowd, a hoarse voice hinted at the long hours she has spent touring the country in a final push to gather supporters for Super Tuesday, when an unprecedented 22 states will hold their presidential primaries at once.

Shuttled from a round-table discussion in New Haven, Conn., to the afternoon rally at Clark University in Worcester yesterday, Clinton was hitting her mid-day stride as she sharply criticized Republican policy, reserving only oblique attacks for her main Democratic challenger, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama. An appearance at a Dorchester phone bank and a one-and-half-hour “town hall” event broadcast on national television still awaited the New York senator as she outlined her platform for voters.

Obama and Arizona Sen. John McCain joined Clinton in Massachusetts yesterday, as the race to grab the most party delegates refocused on New England for the first time since the Jan. 8 New Hampshire primary.

Calling the past seven years “a detour from America’s destiny,” Clinton ripped into Bush’s record on the Iraq war, No Child Left Behind education reform and tax cuts. Clinton called for an economic plan including eco-friendly “green-collar jobs” and a much-needed energy reform that she said must wait “until the two oil men leave the White House.”

Citing her health care plan as the only one among candidates’ proposals that would insure every American, Clinton said resisting a universal program would be “not only morally wrong, but economically stupid.” This stance, Clinton said, contrasts with the Bush administration and disproves Obama’s assertion that Clinton would be unable to make a clean break with the current administration.

At his own rally last night Obama, flanked by Sens. John Kerry and Edward Kennedy and Gov. Deval Patrick, drew a crowd of 6,000 and reiterated his campaign’s trademark call for change.

“Change does not happen from the top down,” Obama said. “It happens from the bottom up. Ordinary people can do extraordinary things.”

Though Obama’s speech began on a shaky note, he quickly found his oratorical groove and cracked jokes about his kindergarten presidential ambitions and distant familial relation to Vice President Dick Cheney. He ran through his planned approaches to the war, global warming, education, health care and taxes, but skated around the issue of economy.

Obama addressed his age and what others have called his inexperience, and joked about the need to “season and stew him a little longer, and cook the hope out of him.”

After spending Sunday night in Massachusetts watching the Super Bowl, McCain woke up early for a last full day of campaigning yesterday. Vying for the Bay State’s 43 Republican delegates and challenging former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney’s home field advantage, McCain was able to excite a 9 a.m. crowd at Faneuil Hall, though his schedule today includes campaign stops on both coasts.

McCain said he supports key economic moves of the Bush administration, including a commitment to tax cuts, and echoed Bush’s State of the Union threat to oppose spending bills with earmarked funds.

McCain refused to follow the withdrawal timelines some candidates have set for American troops in Iraq, calling militant Islamists “despicable scum.” He also recognized Bush for maintaining security since Sept. 11, 2001.

“The president deserves some credit that there hasn’t been an attack on this country since 9/11,” he said.

Though McCain avoided open hostility toward any candidate, he did remark that “our friends, the Democrats” are overeager to exit Iraq, and they would not do it correctly.

Today, 52 percent of all national delegates are up for grabs among Democrats, and 41 percent of Republican delegates are available for GOP candidates. The day marks a peak in the marathon election season that has seen front-runners fall off the campaign trail and unexpected wins.

“Super Tuesday seems to be anyone’s game. I think Hillary is leading in large states,” said Boston University political science professor Doug Kriner.

“It’s shaping up to be a two-man race between McCain and Romney with McCain on the slight edge” Kriner said.

To secure the GOP’s presidential nomination, candidates must pick up 1,191 delegates; Democratic hopefuls are after 2,025 of their own delegates.

Staff reporters Vivian Ho, Victoria Demaria and Andrea Abi-Karam contributed reporting to this story.

Website | More Articles

This is an account occasionally used by the Daily Free Press editors to post archived posts from previous iterations of the site or otherwise for special circumstance publications. See authorship info on the byline at the top of the page.

Comments are closed.