WP political blog, "The Fix," by Chris Cillizza
Posted at 08:58 PM ET, 08/ 7/2007
Debate Wrap-Up: Candidates Choose Sides
The Democratic Presidential Candidates
The Democratic field split into two factions Tuesday night at the AFL-CIO forum in Chicago, with Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.), Joe Biden (Del.) and Chris Dodd (Conn.) on one side and Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) and former Sen. John Edwards (N.C.) on the other. Time and time again Biden and Dodd faced off against Obama and Edwards on foreign and domestic policy.
Dodd called Obama's willingness to consider the possibility of a potential attack inside Pakistan "wrong". Biden added: "Everyone is entitled to their own opinions but not their own facts."
Obama retorted -- quite effectively -- that he found it "amusing that those who helped to authorize and engineer the biggest foreign policy disaster... are now criticizing me for making sure we are on the right battlefield and not the wrong battlefield in the war on terror."
Biden later called out Edwards for the latter's insistence that he alone among the candidates on the stage had fully supported unions. "It's not where you've been in the last two years, it's where you were in the six years in the Senate," Biden said. Edwards avoided a direct rebuttal, perhaps loath to elevate Biden by attacking him.
(It's worth noting that Biden and Dodd were greeted with boos when they attacked Obama, a sign either of the unpopularity of those attacks or that the debate was held in Obama's hometown.)
Clinton largely avoided any direct confrontation with her two main rivals for the nomination, content to let her Senate colleagues do the dirty work. She did warn Obama that the remarks of a presidential candidate can have consequences throughout the world....
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