Campaign criticizes Obama for “NAFTA-gate”
Sen. Hillary Clinton’s communications director Howard Wolfson stopped short of predicting a victory in Texas and Ohio on Tuesday, but still toldreporters during a conference call this morning that he believes his candidate will emerge “successful.”
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“I believe it will be very clear Wednesday morning which campaign has had the better of the day and which campaign has had the worst of it and there will be no ambiguity about that,” said Wolfson. “I am superstitious about actually making declarative predictions, but there will be no question that we will be the successful campaign on Tuesday.”
Chief strategist Mark Penn agreed. “On Wednesday morning, the moment of Sen. Obama will be significantly blunted and new questions raised about whether he is the right nominee for our party as opposed to Sen. Clinton.”
“His allies have counted our campaign over so many times I can’t count,” said Wolfson.
“Sen. Obama is just beginning to go through the normal vetting process that a candidate would go through,” said Penn, singling out “NAFTA-gate” as a particularly thorny problem for Obama. In recent days, the Clinton campaign has questioned the sincerity of Obama’s opposition to NAFTA.
“We will believe the process will continue and we will be the nominee,” said Wolfson. “If Obama doesn’t win in Texas and Ohio — with all the resources he has, with all the good press he has, with all the constant reminders from his campaign that the race is essentially over, then I think Democrats are going to take a second look at this…I think if we wake up on Wednesday and the newspaper headlines are ‘Clinton wins Ohio and Texas,’ we have a whole new ballgame here.”
