Obama faces road test for November election

TOUGH GOING: Obama was grilled about the inflammatory tirades of his former pastor.

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Rajdeep Sardesai

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Keywords: Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama

The controversies have popped up in the Democratic presidential race during a seven-week lull between the last round of major contests in Ohio and Texas on March 4 and next week's critical showdown in Pennsylvania.

Political analyst Linda Fowler said the media were more interested than voters in the controversies. She said polls showed Obama's small-town comments, which became public over the weekend, have had little impact.

"This says more about the media than about the candidates. If this stuff is so important, why aren't the polls moving?" she said.

Hillay, the New York senator and former first lady who has faced her own campaign gaffes, was glad to join in the examination of Obama during the debate. She tried to capitalize on Democratic paranoia about the Republican success in attacking the last two Democratic nominees, John Kerry and Al Gore, by arguing the issues Obama faced in the debate are the same type Republicans will try to exploit in November.

"It goes to this larger set of concerns about how we are going to run against John McCain," Hillary said in the debate. "I've been in this arena for a long time. I have a lot of baggage, and everybody has rummaged through it for years."

Hillary faces a struggle trying to overtake Obama in the Democratic presidential race. She trails in delegates to the Denver nominating convention in August and needs a big win in Pennsylvania on Tuesday and a strong closing effort in the last nine contests to position herself to win the nomination.

While her campaign aides have frequently criticized the media for not subjecting Obama to as much scrutiny as she has faced, they were clearly pleased with the debate grilling.

"In an ideal world, I wish we could conduct our campaigns on questions of policy and policy differentiation. We've learned that campaigns are about much more than that," said Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson. "The questions that Senator Obama were asked last night are the kind of questions Senator Obama will face if he is our nominee," he said.