Obama camp says new Clinton ad will backfire

Sen. Barack Obama's (D-Ill.) campaign manager said Friday morning that a new ad on national security from Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) will backfire as it will only remind voters that Clinton voted for the Iraq war.

Entitled “Children,” the spot features sleeping children and says: “It's 3 a.m., and your children are safe and asleep. But there’s a phone in the White House, and it's ringing. Something’s happening in the world. Your vote will decide who answers that call.”
 
{mosads}The ad, which is already being compared to the famous “Daisy” ad of the 1964 campaign, is the same strategy that Clinton has been using since losing the Iowa caucuses and has been “rejected by voters,” said David Plouffe, Obama's campaign manager, on a conference call with reporters Friday.
 
“Sen. Clinton already had her red phone moment,” Plouffe said. “She had it in 2002. It was on the Iraq war.”
 
He added: “This is about what you say when you answer that phone.”
 
More broadly, the Obama campaign’s purpose of the call was to try to paint an increasingly bleak picture for Clinton in terms of the delegate math.
 
Plouffe repeatedly said that Clinton can't “skate by” just narrowly winning the popular votes in next Tuesday's crucial primaries in Ohio and Texas.
 
To significantly close in on Obama's delegate lead, Clinton needs big wins in both states.
 
“They are going to fail by that measure and fail miserably,” Plouffe said.
 
Plouffe declined to say specifically how much the Obama campaign raised in February. The Clinton campaign announced Thursday it had raked in more than $35 million.
 
Plouffe would only repeat the campaign's assertion that it had raised “significantly more” than Clinton's haul.
 
“We had another very strong month,” Plouffe said.