Democratic
presidential candidates faulted their own party as well as
assailing Republicans as they pitched their candidacies to
the staunchest of Democrats on Friday in Vienna, Va.
Bill Richardson,
John Edwards, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Dennis
Kucinich addressed officials who make up the Democratic
National Committee, their last opportunity to speak to
such a gathering before the first presidential voting
begins in January. Hillary Rodham Clinton was
scheduled to speak too but canceled after a man took
hostages at her office in Rochester, N.H.
Richardson did
not go easy on the party, assailing the
Democratic-controlled Congress for its failure to accomplish
more and calling on the party to win back people's
confidence.
''That begins
with proving that we're listening to them,'' he said.
''Look at the
last 12 months. Not only are we still in Iraq, we still
have the failure called No Child Left Behind. We still have
9 million children with no health insurance. We're
still allowing this president to thumb his nose at the
Bill of Rights. We're slipping into a recession,''
Richardson said. ''And we can't even reject an attorney
general who refuses to condemn torture.''
Edwards blamed
Democrats as well as Republicans for isolating Washington
from the rest of the country.
''The American
people are on the outside,'' he said. ''And on the other
side, on the inside, are the powerful, the well-connected,
and the very wealthy.... The truth is that it's not
just Republicans who built this wall. Democrats
helped.''
Obama called for
tossing out past electoral strategies to embrace
independents and disaffected Republicans. Without mentioning
front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton's name, he
suggested that if she were to win the nomination,
Republicans would reprise the divisions of the 1990s.
''They're
counting on the same bitter partisanship and the same
electoral map that we've had for far too long,'' he
said of the Republican party.
Biden, noting his
long tenure in the Senate, portrayed himself as the
Democrat best able to withstand Republican criticism.
''Before a
Democrat can lead, he or she must get elected,'' he said.
''We know the Republican playbook. They'll say we're
weak. They'll play on people's fears, not their hopes.
Ask yourself: Who do you want in the ring to take
their best shots and then give it back, better, harder, and
faster than they gave it?''
Clinton never
made it to the Sheraton Premiere Hotel in Vienna, and DNC
chairman Howard Dean announced from the podium that she
would not make an address. Outside the hall, aides
kept track of the hostage news on their mobile phones
and on television screens scattered around the lobby.
Sen. Christopher
Dodd skipped the session to campaign in Iowa.
Biden, before
beginning his speech, somberly said he heard the news about
the hostage taking as he made his way to Washington from his
home in Wilmington, Del., and said he spoke for
everybody in hoping ''it all works out right.''
''I wish Hillary
the best of luck,'' he added.
Kucinich alluded
to the hostage situation during his speech.
''We're in
solidarity totally at this moment as we think about what
she's going through,'' he said.
Both Edwards's
and Obama's speeches clearly had Clinton's candidacy in
mind. Clinton, ahead in national polls but bunched with both
men in Iowa, is perceived in some surveys as being too
calculating and of telling voters what they want to
hear.
''Poll-driven
positions because you're worried about what Mitt or Rudy
might say about it just won't do,'' Obama said.
''Too many
politicians from both parties are choosing self-preservation
over principle, compromise over convictions,'' Edwards said.
But all had a
common foil as well -- President Bush. Some of the loudest
applause came when each of the candidates reminded DNC
members that whatever the outcome next November, Bush
would no longer be president.
Obama joked that
''my cousin Dick Cheney'' won't be on the ballot, a
reference to a study that found the two men share an
ancestor. ''We've been trying to hide that for a long
time,'' he added.
And Edwards
specifically distinguished himself from Bush.
''It is time for
a president who asks America to be patriotic about
something other than war,'' he said. ''As your president, I
will call on you to sacrifice so that we can move this
country forward again.''
Richardson,
trying hard to join the front-runners in the polls,
chastised the field for not talking more about jobs
and voiced implicit criticism of Obama, Edwards, and
Clinton for suggesting that some troops may have to
stay in Iraq for some time.
''This is the
hard reality: You can't say you'll end the war in Iraq if
you're leaving thousands of troops behind, or if you won't
even commit to removing them by 2013,'' he said. (Jim
Kuhnhenn, AP)
