Hillary Clinton Loving Every Bit of It in Indiana [View All]

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MERRILLVILLE, Ind. — Two days after climbing into the back of a pickup truck in search of blue-collar votes in North Carolina, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton on Monday made herself at home in front of a fire truck in this town of 31,000 Hoosiers in the industrial northwestern corner of the state.

So ended the run-up to the latest Super Tuesday, which features primaries today in Indiana and North Carolina, where voters will select nearly half of the remaining elected delegates in the marathon campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.

. After morning events in North Carolina, Clinton flew to Merrillville and planned later stops in New Albany and Evansville.


Backed by Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana and a fire truck with a dozen uniformed firefighters in Merrillville, Clinton lauded small-town fire companies as part of “the real heart and soul of America.”

Decrying higher prices for gasoline and food, she said: “I do see you, and I do hear you. I believe you are doing the best you can under difficult circumstances. We’re going to get in there and change those circumstances.”









Hillary Rodham Clinton began the campaign in pearls, assembling a team of fundraisers that included luminaries from New York's financial services industry. (http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/news/politics/blog/2008/05/hillary_clinton_from_pearls_to.html)

She's ending it in pickup trucks, Dairy Queens and fire stations, taking a 2-by-4 to "Wall Street money brokers" and vowing to break up oil-rich OPEC.

No development in the 2008 campaign is quite so striking as Clinton's transformation from a front-runner policy wonk with deep pockets to a cash-starved populist staking her hopes in Tuesday's North Carolina and Indiana primaries on a promise to lower gas prices.

"If I were president, I would be jumping up and down in the White House" to cut gas prices, she shouted to a crowd of several hundred supporters at firehouse here in the northwest Indiana suburbs.







It's become a Monday ritual in America, this time played out under a giant U.S. flag, in an overcrowded suburban firehouse shaking to the strains of country music.

Hillary Clinton, her Tuesday 2008 political obituary only 24 hours away – again – bounds on to the stage, indefatigable, energized as if this was the first time she had ever visited voters in this part of Indiana, not the 10th time.

It is an unabashed populist theme Clinton dishes up, promising to save American jobs, calling for a global trade timeout, vowing to take on China, telling them she is tough enough to wrestle the big oil companies to the mat.

"This is the real heart and soul of America," Clinton says, speaking of the volunteer firefighters arrayed on the stage behind her . . .

She is the fighter, she says, the one who can take a punch and get back up, just like the hard-working middle class she is courting.

"You can do it," members of the crowd shout out.

"We can do it. We can do it together," Clinton calls back.







Standing in front of a Merrillville Fire Department ladder truckMerrillville Fire Department ladder truck topped with volunteer firefighters and framed by an American flag, Clinton took the stage with John Mellencamp anthems still echoing off the walls of Fire Station No. 2.

Sen. Evan Bayh introduced the candidate, as he has at several area events.

Bayh reminded the crowd about the shot and a beer Clinton drank at Crown Point watering hole Bronko's, an event credited with helping revive her campaign.







"We learned in Crown Point she can take a shot not only figuratively, but literally," Bayh said as Clinton laughed.

In the crowd at the packed fire house, Bronko's bartender Russ Panning said he has decided to support Clinton since he offered her a shot of Crown Royal April 12.

But Panning said he likes Clinton because of her plans for the economy, not because they drank together.

"We have to get something going economically," Panning said. Others in the crowded truck barn said Clinton's economic message resonates.








Hillary Clinton made a new vow to confront OPEC, after oil broke the symbolic 120 dollars a barrel barrier on the eve of the next White House nominating showdown. (http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5iqZOY9sLo1nPmNSYM3MqZjrebGTQ)

"We're going to go right at OPEC," Clinton said, on a last-minute campaign swing ahead of Tuesday's Indiana and North Carolina primary clashes against her Democratic rival Barack Obama.

"They can no longer be a cartel, a monopoly that get together once every couple of months in some conference room in some plush place in the world," Clinton said, sparking cheers in a crowded fire station.







"They decide how much oil they're going to produce and what price they're going to put it at," Clinton said.

"That's not a market. That's a monopoly," Clinton said, in her latest condemnation of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, as her campaign takes on an increasingly populist tone amid rising gasoline prices.

Clinton has said she would amend US anti-trust law to allow the United States to confront OPEC, and also promised to tackle the group through the World Trade Organization (WTO), if she is elected president.









EVANSVILLE, Ind. -- Hillary Clinton admitted on Monday it would be tough to lift the federal gasoline tax this summer as she has proposed because of a likely veto from President George W. Bush.

"Realistically, it's tough. I know that," she told reporters on her campaign plane on Monday.

"Do I think we can get it done, past a veto by President Bush as the ultimate blocker?" she said. "It's obviously a very difficult challenge. But that doesn't mean you don't try.

"We've got to produce results for working people. They've got to feel that Democrats are on their side," she said.

"Folks really respect it if you get up and fight. Even if you can't on the first, second or third time produce all the results that you would like."










Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton had been campaigning for more than 16 hours when she strode onto the stage at Evansville Central High School just before 11 p.m. Monday.

She had started her day at a community college in eastern North Carolina. There were rallies at a train depot, a firehouse in northwest Indiana and another across the state on the Ohio River.

But Clinton betrayed barely a hint of fatigue as she beamed at a crowd of screaming supporters at the high school. "This campaign has been a joy," she said before launching into a full-throated attack on the Bush administration.






"I love campaigning," the senator from New York told a crowd over the weekend in Gastonia, N.C., a onetime textile manufacturing mecca decimated by the flood of cheap goods from China.

Even when her days end near midnight, Clinton often pauses before boarding her charter plane to shake another hand and chat with a bus driver or a baggage handler.

On Monday night, despite a broken microphone and the advancing hour, Clinton delivered a nearly complete campaign speech. And when it was over, she spent more than half an hour signing autographs and posing for photos, finally ending her day after midnight.









Hillary Clinton – along with her Hoosier campaign partner Sen. Evan Bayh – held an impromptu press conference on her campaign plane Monday night, stressing that she started as the underdog in today’s North Carolina and Indiana primaries, acknowledging getting a gas-tax bill enacted would be a “difficult challenge” and explaining why she thought her populist push on kitchen-table economic issues is resonating with voters. (http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2008/05/06/clintons-in-flight-menu-the-economy-is-the-issue/?mod=WSJBlog)

“I think the economy is the issue in this election right now, and for most Americans there is this pent-up frustration that people are just not addressing it in a way that makes sense to them,” the New York senator told a clutch of reporters and photographers.

“I happen to think that we’re ready for a president again who really does take on these interests in a strong, heart-felt, effective way. And that’s why talking about the gas tax, by contrasting my position with both Sen. Obama and Sen. McCain really does seem to resonate with people. Because they really want somebody who’s going to stand up for them.”

As for her chances in today’s races: “We knew we started out behind, Sen. Obama had a tremendous amount of advantages going into this and we’ve worked really hard and its been a great, great experience and I’ve loved every bit of it.”

A reported asked, “What happens next?”

Clinton’s answer: “West Virginia. West Virginia happens next.”