Hillary Clinton: 'Inexperience' will diminish Obama 'threat'
RAW STORY
Published:
Wednesday January 3, 2007
 According to a New York Times article - which had been hyped for nearly a day by the Drudge Report - Senator Hillary Clinton (NY-Dem) views freshman Senator Barack Obama (Ill-Dem) as her "biggest obstacle" in capturing the 2008 presidential nomination but believes that his "inexperience" makes him a flawed candidate.
"Mrs. Clinton told Democrats that she viewed her two strongest potential Democratic opponents as Senator Barack Obama of Illinois and John Edwards, the former senator from North Carolina," Patrick Healy and Adam Nagourney write for the Times. "They said that she viewed Mr. Obama as her biggest obstacle to the nomination, but that she believed the threat of his candidacy will diminish as voters learn how inexperienced he is in government and foreign affairs."
Last night, at his website, Matt Drudge teased the article by claiming that "newsroom sources" indicated that it was "a high-impact story."
Earlier today, Media Matters criticized ABC News for reporting on Drudge's "alleged NY Times Clinton story."
"In its write-up of Drudge's report, ABC did not mention that Drudge revised his claim about when the Times will publish the story after it became clear that Drudge's original reported publication date of January 3 was wrong," Media Matters noted.
RAW STORY has learned that the article was considered for the front page of Wednesday's Times, but for unknown reasons was postponed one day.
Excerpts from Times article:
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This meeting was one of a series of nearly nonstop political consultations that Mrs. Clinton has engaged in — over dinner and drinks, at private offices and at her home in Washington — since Election Day, in what her advisers say are preparations for a probable announcement that she is taking the first steps into the presidential campaign.
Mrs. Clinton, the New York Democrat, was described by participants as leaving little doubt that she plans to run, without saying so directly. Depending on her audience, she appears to be either seeking information to use in campaign strategy, pressing potential supporters to hold tight and wait for her to announce, or gauging how certain issues — in particular, her initial vote for the war in Iraq — might play.
The sessions are the subject of much discussion in Democratic circles, and they seem designed in part to counter any impression that Mrs. Clinton is surrounded by an insular circle of longtime advisers and friends who are detached from many of the grassroots Democrats who have grown in influence since the last time a Clinton ran for president.
According to participants, Mrs. Clinton has pressed to find out everything from whether former Vice President Al Gore will run again (he is inclined not to, people tell her) to how much support remains for Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, the party’s 2004 candidate, among Democratic leaders (anemic, she has heard).
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FULL TIMES ARTICLE AT THIS LINK
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