Obama team insists he still can catch Clinton; Axelrod: "on the schedule that we need to be on"

[DeepModem Mom]

Reuters: Obama team insists he still can catch Clinton
Thu Sep 27, 2007
By Steve Holland

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democrat Barack Obama emerged on Thursday from the latest campaign debate with aides insisting he can still catch front-runner Hillary Clinton and defending his decision not to go on the attack against her.

While former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards frequently pointed out differences with Clinton at a Wednesday night debate in Hanover, New Hampshire, Obama largely held his fire and stayed above the fray. A top aide insisted afterward Obama had never intended to go into a more critical mode at the debate despite widespread anticipation that he would do so and reported concern from some of his donors that the Illinois senator needed a breakthrough performance to shake up the race for the White House in November 2008.

Obama campaign manager David Axelrod told reporters that Obama, who leads the Democratic race in raising money for his White House run, preferred to demonstrate a "common purpose to our politics rather than divisiveness and ... political point-scoring."...

***

Axelrod said Obama was "on the schedule that we need to be on to do what we need to do." "We've always viewed this process as a sequential process that begins in January in Iowa and moves on to New Hampshire and I'm perfectly willing to concede the lead to her in ... September and October," Axelrod said. As an example that an early front-runner does not always last, Axelrod urged reporters to consider the case of former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, who was leading the polls at this stage of the 2004 Democratic campaign and was defeated by Sen. John Kerry.

"She's the quasi-incumbent in this race," he said of Clinton. "She's 100 percent known. She's been in American politics for 20 years. She's been running for president in a de facto way for some time. So we have been catching up from the beginning, and we understand that this is a process."...

http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSN2738834120070927?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews&rpc=22&sp=true

[sailor65]

1. GO DENNIS! n/t

[Cheney Killed Bambi]

2. I'm not

a Kucinich supporter, but I have to admit that he smoked 'em at the debate last night.

[sailor65]

6. I love your screen name! n/t

[illinoisprogressive]

3. OMG! It is just Sept and the media is acting like it's Jan. so impatient

they have been trying to speed things up and twist things because of their boredom.
It's like they think they are campaign managers and trying to make the candidates do stuff just so they can fill the time and have something to talk about.
well, too bad. Maybe if they were not so obsessed with the Clintons, they could find ways to fill the time with stuff like in depth analysis and looks at the individual candidates instead of stuff to cover to find a way to tie Hillary into it.

[mrreowwr_kittty]

4. Let them keep blathering about Clinton.

My Obama group here is walking our neighborhoods and raising money. He's scheduled to come to our city in 3 weeks and we're having a hard time finding a venue large enough to hold the expected crowd. The only people I personally know supporting Clinton are establishment types. They can barely fill a house party.

[TwilightGardener]

5. Luv that pic!

[Colobo]

7. Obama's doing things his way. He's not letting Chris Matthews and Buchanan

run his campaign.