JOHNSTON, Iowa — The Democratic presidential candidates made nice for the television cameras during a polite debate Thursday, while the two top candidates dealt offstage with the latest fallout from their close contest for the nomination.
The 90-minute debate was the last chance for the six major candidates to face one another before voting starts in Iowa on Jan. 3.
With three candidates close for first place in the state — Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois and former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina — none dared attack a rival for fear of a backlash from Iowa voters. Thus, this “debate” did little to alter the shape of the campaign.
Off camera, however, the campaigns continued to wrestle, as Clinton’s camp looked for ways to slow Obama’s momentum, which has washed away her narrow lead in Iowa and her larger lead in New Hampshire.
A day after Clinton’s national campaign co-chairman called attention to Obama’s admitted use of illegal drugs as a teen, Clinton apologized to her Senate colleague.
Clinton, who earlier had called this the “fun part” of the campaign, told Obama she didn’t authorize or approve of the comments from her co-chairman, Bill Shaheen.
While Obama’s chief strategist, David Axelrod, said Obama accepted the apology, he said the senator also delivered a strong message to Clinton.
“What Sen. Obama expressed to Sen. Clinton is that it’s important we send a message to our campaign up and down the line: It’s not fun, this is not sport, to try and attack opponents in these kinds of ways,” Axelrod said. “You’ve got to send that signal from the top.”
Later Thursday, Shaheen resigned as Clinton’s campaign co-chair man.
Throughout the debate, the candidates all tended to agree with one another but drew stark contrasts to Republicans by proposing tax increases on the wealthy and spending cuts for the Pentagon.
Several Democrats said they would raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans by rescinding the tax cuts they received under President Bush with bipartisan support in Congress.
“I want to restore the tax rates that we had in the ’90s,” said Clinton. “That means raising taxes on corporations and wealthy individuals. I want to keep the middle-class tax cuts.”
Obama said he would close tax loopholes, mentioning one building in the Cayman Islands that’s the home address for 12,000 businesses.
“Now that’s either the biggest building in the world or the biggest tax scam in the world, and I think we know which one it is,” he said.
He said he would use the cash to pay for a payroll-tax cut for those making less than $75,000 a year.
Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware said he would raise taxes on the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans.
“You can put more into the government by close to $150 billion in tax cuts going to people who don’t need them, will not affect the economy, and they didn’t ask for them.”
Most would use the higher taxes to finance new government spending, not to reduce the federal budget deficit. Only one candidate, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, said he would try to balance the federal budget.
“It would be a major priority of mine,” Richardson said, adding that he would cut $73 billion in corporate “welfare” and $57 billion in military spending, end pork-barrel spending and push for a constitutional amendment requiring a balanced budget.
