A last-minute town-hall-style event, announced Wednesday by CNN and scheduled to take place just one week before the Iowa caucuses, could be a saving grace for Hillary Clinton, whose presidential campaign has faced an unexpectedly formidable challenge from Democratic rival Bernie Sanders.

The prime-time gathering will air Monday at nine P.M., a huge change from the three debates that the Democratic National Committee scheduled on inconvenient weekend nights. The odd scheduling and limited number of debates provoked criticism from Sanders and fellow candidate Martin O’Malley for giving them inadequate time to make their case to the American public, especially in comparison to the numerous Republican debates that have drawn record-breaking numbers of viewers. Clinton largely abstained from weighing in on the call for more Democratic debates, prompting accusations that D.N.C. chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz was strategically scheduling the debates to give Clinton the best possible chance of coasting to the nomination. (A town-hall event—which is technically not a debate, since the candidates do not have to address each other—does not need to be sanctioned by the D.N.C.)

But the political winds have since shifted for Clinton, whose relative absence from the debate stage has given her Republican opponents ample time to mold her image in an unfavorable way. The candidates’ routine evocation of the Benghazi attacks, aided by a neatly timed movie dramatization, only amplify revelations that she handled classified e-mails using her personal e-mail address. Donald Trump’s repeated reminders of her husband’s extramarital affairs have even prompted liberal women, her core constituency, to question whether they can support a candidate who attempted to discredit women who accused Bill Clinton of sexual assault. (Sanders, who enjoys unexpectedly high support among the young, female voters that Clinton was counting on, has also raised her husband’s infidelities on the campaign trail.) Clinton’s standing in the polls has since dropped in Iowa, where she and Sanders are neck-and-neck, and plummeted in New Hampshire, where Sanders is ahead by double digits.

With these aggregated setbacks growing more worrisome, Clinton has seized on a new strategy: clinging as hard as possible to the Obama brand, and casting Sanders as someone who would undo his legacy. It’s a tactic she deployed several times during Sunday's debate, claiming that Sanders’s health-care plan would give Republicans an opening to repeal Obamacare, and arguing that his anti–Wall Street rhetoric was at odds with Obama’s attempts to regulate the big banks. On Wednesday, she published a laudatory essay titled “What President Obama’s Legacy Means to Me,” in which she swore to “defend President Obama’s accomplishments and build upon them.” Clinton, who previously attempted to distance herself from her former boss, added that his policies “shouldn’t be dismissed or taken lightly,” doubling down on her implicit swipe at Sanders.

With about a week until Iowa—and the crucible of New Hampshire shortly thereafter—Clinton may view a final debate-style event as her last chance to transform her image before a wide television audience. Another opportunity to stand alongside her opponents and draw out her differences with Sanders may be Clinton’s best hope to bolster her argument for pragmatic progressivism over his more tempting social-democratic revolution.

Update: 7:00 P.M.: A spokesperson for CNN said Wednesday night that the news network had reached out to the Iowa Democratic Party in November about setting up a town hall near the Iowa caucuses.