LAS VEGAS - Hillary Rodham Clinton bounced back from her worst debate performance with one of her best, thanks to careful prepping, a day of rest — and a little help from her enemies.
Clinton’s performance at Thursday night’s Vegas debate, which even her foes privately praised, owed much to the precision of her answers and her decision to attack John Edwards and Barack Obama directly for the first time, analysts and observers say.
But Obama, Edwards and CNN’s debate moderators chose not to grill her on three highly charged issues: her U-turn on driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants, mixed signals about the release of Clinton White House records and her campaign’s admission that staffers planted audience questions at an event in Iowa.
“It was up to Obama and Edwards to press her if the moderators wouldn’t, and they didn’t, so it’s on them,” said George Washington University politics professor John Sides.
The debate drew the largest audience of any primary forum in history, with more than 4 million viewers.
Former Bush political guru Karl Rove, who has taken it upon himself to publicly advise Obama on how to attack Clinton, told CSPAN Friday that the Illinois senator “missed the opportunity,” calling his performance “vague and wandering around, and weak, and insipid.”
On Friday, spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Obama “is less concerned about the scorekeeping by Washington insiders and more about giving straight answers … It is unfortunate that Sen. Clinton did not use the opportunity to do the same.”
CNN moderator Wolf Blitzer accepted Clinton’s single-word answer — “no” — when she was asked about Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s now-dead plan to grant driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants, even though she had reversed her position just one day earlier.
Obama stumbled on the question himself before reiterating his support for licenses and was, therefore, in no position to attack her on that issue as he did, to great effect, in Philadelphia.
No one chose to challenge her on the planted-question issue, which had dominated the previous week of campaigning. The frontrunner had drilled extensively but never needed to use those responses, according to people close her campaign.
“Edwards and Obama should shoot their political consultants for the fact that they were so vague and confusing,” said Robert Zimmerman, Democratic national committeeman from Long Island, who is one of Clinton’s top fundraisers.
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