Democrats in '08 race battle over anti-war vote

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The race for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination has turned almost entirely into a contest over who has the toughest and most credible plan to pull U.S. troops out of Iraq.

Now, the front-runners are adjusting their positions and escalating their rhetoric in an all-out battle for support among anti-war Democratic voters in January's early caucus and primary states.

"Basically, the race is on for the hearts and minds of the majority of Democratic primary voters who oppose the war, and that's what you see happening now," said campaign consultant Bud Jackson, who produces TV ads for Democratic candidates.

In Iowa, for example, where the nation's first presidential caucuses take place, "it's the major issue with core Democrats," said Rob Tully, the state's former Democratic chairman.

Among the top contenders, no one has had more political difficulty with the issue than Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, who until recently has opposed proposals from within her party to set a deadline for withdrawing U.S. combat forces from Iraq. She opposed President Bush's plan to send additional troops to Iraq, and instead favored keeping the current level of forces there.

But with her presidential-preference polls in decline, she abruptly adjusted her position last week, deciding to support legislation the Senate approved Thursday that would begin phased troop withdrawals within four months, "with the goal" of pulling all combat forces out of Iraq by March 31, 2008.

Mrs. Clinton's strategists said she concluded the term "goal" did not set an absolute deadline for troop withdrawal, a move that she has said was "not smart strategy" to defeat insurgents in Iraq.

Her midcourse correction also came after her chief rival for the nomination, Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, escalated his opposition to the war during a campaign stop in Iowa.

"We're in the midst of a war that should never have been authorized," Mr. Obama said in Dubuque. During the campaign stop, his staff distributed the text of a speech Mr. Obama gave in 2002 as a state senator denouncing the U.S.-led war.

"I think it's a contrast between me and the other candidates," he told the Des Moines Register. "I have consistently believed this war was not just a problem of execution, but was a problem of conception."