On its way to an expected win in tomorrow's Pennsylvania primary, Hillary Clinton's campaign team is doing its best to tamp down lofty expectations that could starve her campaign of much-needed momentum if the political chattering class decides that a less-than-double-digit win isn't enough for her to realistically continue her presidential campaign.
To that end, campaign spokesman Howard Wolfson "categorically" denied a bright-red Drudge Report "flash" claiming that an internal poll showed Clinton with an 11-point lead in the Keystone State. He said the report did not come from anyone within the campaign and said that no such poll was conducted by the Clinton campaign, which could hardly afford to conduct a poll anyway as it struggles to keep up with Obama's financial juggernaut. (Obama raised twice as much as Clinton last month, and he is outspending her by a two-to-one margin on television ads in Pennsylvania.)
"We categorically deny" the report, Wolfson said during a campaign media conference call Monday. "Anybody that wants to follow up on this, I suggest they get a copy of the poll ... because there is no copy of the poll."
'Closing argument' ad invokes Pearl Harbor, gas lines, bin Laden
Also Monday, Clinton released another Pennsylvania TV ad that argues only she is prepared to be president; the campaign called it Clinton's "closing argument. Advisers argued the ad, in which features a gravel-voiced narrator, grimly patriotic music and video of Osama bin Laden, the Pearl Harbor attacks, gas lines of the 1970s, Hurricane Katrina victims and troops preparing for battle.
"You need to be ready for anything," the narrator warns, "especially now, with two wars, oil prices skyrocketing and an economy in crisis."
It goes on to quote former President Harry S. Truman's "If you can't stand the heat get out of the kitchen," and asks "Who do you think has what it takes?"
The Obama campaign accused Clinton of playing to the politics of fear.
"It's ironic that she would borrow the President's tactics in her own campaign and invoke bin Laden to score political points. We already have a President who plays the politics of fear, and we don't need another,” said Obama spokesman Bill Burton in a statement e-mailed to reporters 90 minutes after it debuted.
The Clinton campaign said its ad only meant to portray her as the strongest candidate in a difficult time, and it insisted the latest ad was no different than any Obama ads (none of which have featured images of the al Qaeda leader).
"We think that Hillary Clinton is the best candidate by far to stand up to the pressures of the presidency," said Geoff Garin, her chief strategist. He compared their argument to Obama saying he is the only candidate who will be able to change Washington and asked whether that was a negative message.
"This is exactly the same thing," he insisted.
The campaign also sought to tamp down expectations that they would need to win by at least 10 points to be seen as truly "winning" Pennsylvania. Obama has halved what was a 15-plus point lead by Clinton only a few weeks ago, and expectations are that super delegates would continue to trend towards him if he lost by only five points or so on Tuesday. But the Clinton campaign said that if he was playing to win, that was the only metric by which the contest should be judged. Whether they win by one vote or 100,000 votes makes no difference Wolfson said.
Clinton debuted the following ad, "Kitchen," as her closing argument to Pennsylvania voters:
On its way to an expected win in tomorrow's Pennsylvania primary, Hillary Clinton's campaign team is doing its best to tamp down lofty expectations that could starve her campaign of much-needed momentum if the political chattering class decides that a less-than-double-digit win isn't enough for her to realistically continue her presidential campaign. 