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Bill, stumping for Hillary in NH, comes off like "Elvis playing Reno"
by Mark Liebovich, New York TimesIs this what it would have been like had Elvis been reduced to playing Reno? Ouch!  Former President Bill Clinton has been drawing sleepy and sometimes smallish crowds at big venues in the state that revived his presidential campaign in 1992. He entered to polite applause and rows of empty seats at the University of New Hampshire on Friday. Several people filed out midspeech, and the room was largely quiet as he spoke, with few interruptions for laughter or applause. He talked about his administration, his foundation work and some about his wife. . . . Maybe the sluggish day was a blip. It was, in fairness, the day after Mrs. Clinton finished third in the Iowa caucuses, behind Senator Barack Obama of Illinois and John Edwards of North Carolina. Mr. Clinton was working on 30 minutes sleep. He traveled to New Hampshire from Iowa in the wee hours, and the university was on winter break.But there was a similarly listless aura at the previous stop, in Rochester. And again, on Saturday in Bow, at just the sort of high school gym that the master campaigner used to blow out. Only about 225 showed up in Bow about one-third the capacity of the room to hear Mr. Clinton hit his bullet points on the subprime lending crisis, $100 barrels of oil and how 10 of Hillarys fellow senators have endorsed her. The crowd seemed very passive, Arthur Cunningham of Bow said after the speech. Maybe they were tired. . . . Tired of him, perhaps? Posted by: Mike 2008-01-07 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=217803 |