Hillary Clinton Groovin' in North Carolina

bigtree

(1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore

Fri May-02-08 08:59 PM
Original message

Hillary Clinton Groovin' in North Carolina

KINSTON, N.C. -- The time is short and so her days are long. Most begin very early in the morning. They almost always stretch late into the night. Rallies. Town hall meetings. Small gatherings. Rope lines. Local interviews. Network heavies. Hotel arrivals after midnight. It is an endless rotation, repeated over and over and over again.

Hillary Clinton heads into yet another pre-primary weekend knowing the script by heart. Back to the wall. Running out of options. Needing a victory. Her slim hopes of winning the Democratic nomination depend on victories -- and more. She needs Barack Obama to stumble, again. She needs superdelegates to start swinging back in her direction. She needs to overtake her rival in the popular vote. She needs a break on Florida and Michigan.

But at this point in the long race, Clinton has found a groove, pushing forward relentlessly, demonstrating with each stop that she will not yield until she is finally defeated.

Clinton has found a home -- and a potentially receptive audience -- among rural Democrats. The rural strategy worked to precision in Ohio, where she swept virtually everything outside the big cities. Her Indiana and North Carolina schedules reflect the same approach. Small towns. Middle-class and working-class. Older voters. Women.

In Indiana on Thursday, surrounded by daughter Chelsea and mother Dorothy Rodham, she spoke at length about concerns that women and parents have. In Kinston Friday morning, she talked agriculture and the programs she helped organize in upstate New York to help growers find markets for their products.

Her core message, as she says now repeatedly, is "jobs, jobs, jobs." Her secondary message is that she delivers. "When I tell you I'll do something, I'll do it, or move heaven and earth" trying, she said. And there is also a heavy dose of reassurance that she will be a president who will represent the needs of working families . . . more:http://blog.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/05/02/clinton_in_her_element.html?hpid=topnews

Sen. Clinton began her day outside a John Deere shop in this working-class community this morning, talking up farmers and bashing oil companies.

Clinton added Kinston to her schedule late Thursday as the wide leads that Sen. Barack Obama enjoyed in North Carolina polls have ebbed in recent days. The state's Democratic primary is Tuesday.

In Kinston, Clinton reiterated her support of giving taxpayers a summer break from the 18-cent federal gas tax, saying she would force oil companies to pay it instead.

“Sure, we need the long-term , but we’re not going to make any long-term changes until we get the two oil men out of the White House,” Clinton said.

And she pledged to end tax breaks for companies that send jobs overseas.

“Not one penny of your tax dollars will go to a company that takes a job out of North Carolina,” Clinton said. “That’s going to end.”

“The economy is not working the way it needs to, to create good jobs and produce rising incomes,” she said. “We lost 20,000 jobs last month and people are saying, “well that’s better than we thought.” I don’t accept that at all.”

“We’re not supposed to be losing jobs in America, we’re supposed to be creating jobs in America. So losing 20,000 jobs isn’t exactly a welcome piece of information.”

Clinton released a statement on the jobs report: (http://embeds.blogs.foxnews.com/2008/05/02/hillary-20000-jobs-is-20000-jobs/)

“Only in George Bush’s economy could the standard for analyzing the jobs report become “it could have been worse.” Losing 20,000 jobs in April is completely unacceptable. It marks the fourth straight month of job loss, and means we have now lost more than a quarter-million jobs in 2008. This job loss is hitting families at a time when they are already facing record gas prices, record declines in home values and skyrocketing costs for everything from food to health care.

“We need a President who understands that a good job is the ticket to the American Dream, and who will fight every day for an economy that creates, not loses, jobs. That’s what my campaign is about: jobs, jobs, jobs and jobs. And it is why I am focused on providing struggling middle class Americans real relief right now, with extended unemployment insurance, a $30 billion emergency housing fund, and having the big oil companies pay the gas tax this summer instead of families.”

HENDERSONVILLE, North Carolina – Hillary Clinton returned to North Carolina on Friday, looking to close the gap with Barack Obama ahead of Tuesday’s primary by trawling for voters in the state’s more rural areas. (http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/05/02/back-in-north-carolina-clinton-targets-small-town-usa/)

“There’s power in them there hills,” said supporter North Carolina Gov. Mike Easley, warming up the crowd at a rally in the hilly western part of the state. “The mountains of North Carolina have about 10 percent of the vote in this state. It’s no accident that Hillary Clinton has been up here as many times as she has.”

Earlier in the day, the New York senator was joined by two of her upstate constituents who praised her support of the agriculture industry at a rally at a John Deere sales center in rural Kinston. Clinton and her surrogates often tout her success in New York’s conservative upstate farming counties as proof that she can not only work with Republicans but that she looks out for small town USA.

“ just feeling so much at home because small towns - whether they’re in North Carolina, New York or Arkansas - are really the base of this country,” Clinton told the large crowd outside the Hendersonville courthouse. “Small towns gave us our values, small towns give us so much of the texture of our lives and we’ve got to make sure we never lose that.”

Hillary Clinton tried to make clear here that her plan for a gas tax holiday is just a part of her plan to address fuel costs, saying that there “is no contradiction” between dealing legislation she has now introduced and a “long-term” energy plan. (http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/05/02/974649.aspx)

“We have a choice,” she said. “We can choose to have you continue to pay the federal gas tax this summer or we can choose to try to make the oil companies pay it out of their record profits. This is the kind of choice that I believe we should be trying to make, because I know where I stand, and I know where my opponents stand.”

Her rhetoric was somewhat tamer than the “with us or against us” line that Obama criticized her for earlier today. But the campaign told reporters before her remarks that Clinton had officially introduced legislation to suspend the gas tax for the summer and pay for it with a “windfall profits tax,” showing she intends to see her plan through despite opposition.

Clinton’s rally was in a picturesque downtown setting outside the Henderson County courthouse downtown. Thousands crammed into the streets to greet her, and she tailored some of her remarks to emphasize policies for small towns.

“I’m feeling so much at home because small towns, whether they’re in North Carolina, New York or Arkansas, are really the base of this country,” she said. “Small towns gave us our values; small towns give us so much of the texture of our lives. And we’ve gotta make sure we never lose that. That means having a president who’s going to focus on agriculture for family farmers. … It also means we need an economic development program for small town America.”

GREENSBORO, NC -- Hillary Clinton told a crowd at Guilford College this afternoon that a lot is riding on the Tar Heel State's Tuesday primary. (http://hotlineblog.nationaljournal.com/archives/2008/05/hrc_i_need_a_bi.html)

""We need a big, big vote here in North Carolina," she said. "North Carolina hasn't been in this kind of spotlight in helping to pick a Democratic nominee for a long, long time," she said. "When the voting is over on Tuesday night, I know we will have heard from North Carolinians about what you think the next president should do, and I hope that you will give me a chance to work for you."

Clinton also again addressed new figures on job losses in America.

"Last month we lost 20,000 more jobs in America," she said. "Some people are saying, 'Oh well thank goodness it wasn't worse.' But if you were one of those 20,000 people that's about as bad as it gets, isn't it. We're supposed to be creating jobs, not losing them."

She said her "comprehensive" plan to deal with the energy crisis was one way to do that, both short-term and long-term. And she again pitched her gas tax plan.

"We also need to give people some relief right now, because folks are hurting," she said. "I've talked t a lot of people here in North Carolina, Indiana and elsewhere, who tell me they literally get sick to their stomach when they pull up to the gas tank anymore."

Clinton, speaking to a crowd of about 700, promised to launch an investigation of oil companies, challenge OPEC and tap the nation's strategic oil reserves as a way to relieve the current gas crunch.

"We should ask the oil companies this summer to pay the gas tax out of their own pockets, instead of you paying it," Clinton said. "I think it is time to go after the oil companies ... because they have had these record profits."

During a speech that lasted about 40 minutes, Clinton touched on many of the themes that have dominated her campaign, including affordable health care, education and ending the war in Iraq.

Clinton never mentioned Obama by name, but pointed to her experience as a reason that Democrats should give her "a big, big vote in North Carolina."

"Think about it as a hiring decision," Clinton said. "Who would you hire the toughest job in the world?"

But either way, Clinton said, America has passed a great milestone.

"We can look into the eyes of any African-American child or American girl and say 'you can grow up to become president,'" Clinton said.