Edwards came out fighting early in the debate. Debating Dems trade blows over Iraq

MANCHESTER, N.H. -- Eight Democrats spent two hours on stage here tonight and spoke memorably on only one topic: The war in Iraq.

The debate -- the second in preparation for the Democratic primaries next year -- affirmed that Iraq will be the central terrain on which the campaign is fought.


It also affirmed the centrality -- literally, on CNN’s stage -- of the three leading candidates, Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and former Senator John Edwards.

They occupied the bulk of CNN’s airtime, despite running protests from the campaign of Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd.

And it drew into sharp relief the strengths, weaknesses, and tactics of the three leading candidates on the Iraq war.

For Illinois Senator Barack Obama, who appeared more relaxed than in the first Democratic debate and occupied more airtime than any of his rivals, that meant asserting that he opposed the invasion before the war began.

For Senator John Edwards, it meant stressing his currently unflinching anti-war stance, and his refusal to moderate his position in response to apparent political realities.

And for Hillary Clinton, it meant just the opposite: An attempt to minimize the difference between the Democrats’ views, and to instead assert her own competence, experience, and onstage command as a qualification in itself.

Litmus test?

Obama delivered his message with perhaps the night’s hardest punch: “I think John -- the fact is that I opposed this war from the start,” he told Edwards. “So you're about four and a half years late on leadership on this issue.”

Later, moderator Wolf Blitzer pushed Obama to make the war vote a litmus test -- something his campaign has subtly suggested it should be.

“Do you think someone who authorized the use of force to go to war in Iraq should be president of the United States?” Blitzer asked.

“I don't think it's a disqualifier. I think that people were making their best judgments at the time,” Obama demurred.

Edwards, for his part, pressed the difference between his vocal opposition to funding a continuing war in Iraq and Clinton’s and Obama’s quiet votes against that funding. He also drew a round of applause for acknowledging an error in voting for the war -- the very target of Obama’s attack.

“Democratic primary voters clearly know how Senator Edwards voted on Iraq,” shrugged an Edwards advisor, Jonathan Prince, after the debate.

Clinton's high road

Clinton, for her part, tried to set herself “above the fray,” in the words of her pollster, Mark Penn, and several other campaign advisors circulating the post-debate spin-room.

In particular, she tried to rise above the squabbling men and to diminish the difference between herself and the other leaders on the war, both acts enhanced by the vocal presence of two men of the left, Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich and former Alaska Senator Mike Gravel.

“I think it's important particularly to point out: This is George Bush's war. He is responsible for this war,” she said amid the scrap between Obama and Edwards.

“What we are trying to do, whether it's by speaking out from the outside or working and casting votes that actually make a difference from the inside, we are trying to end the war. And each of us has made that very clear. We have different approaches.”

Only one candidate in the race voted for the most recent supplemental funding for the Iraq war, Delaware Senator Joseph Biden.

“As long as there is a single troop in Iraq that I know if I take action by funding them, I increase the prospect they will live or not be injured -- I cannot and will not vote not to fund them,” he said.

His remarks dragged the candidates briefly into the reality of a general election, and exposed what could become a vulnerability when one contender emerges from the narrow primary audience to face the wider electorate.