Reply #98: Made you look foolish not to include that it was IMMATURE BHO fans who did this!! [View All]

May 8, 2008
Amid Talk of the End and Boos From the Crowd, Clinton Carries On
By JOHN M. BRODER

SHEPHERDSTOWN, W.Va. — Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s greatest gift may be her ability to remain upright and smiling as chaos and chagrin surround her.

On what was probably one of the toughest days of her campaign so far, with pundits and analysts of all stripes declaring her presidential candidacy finished, Mrs. Clinton put on her battle face Wednesday and confronted what was at times a hostile crowd at a hastily arranged speech here at Shepherd University.

Shepherdstown, a quaint and hippieish town on the Potomac River in the West Virginia Panhandle, is where Robert E. Lee led his Confederate Army in retreat after the battle of Antietam, the single bloodiest day of the Civil War.

Mrs. Clinton endured boos when she mentioned her proposal for a gasoline tax holiday, catcalls when she spoke of ending the Iraq war and, most difficult of all, the heckling of her daughter, Chelsea, who introduced her.

“End the dynasty!” a young man holding an Obama poster shouted when Chelsea Clinton stepped to the microphone.

All the while, a smile was fixed on Mrs. Clinton’s perfectly made-up face — not a hair was out of place — and she betrayed only an occasional glimmer of recognition of the exceedingly narrow straits she must now navigate.

At one point in her 19-minute remarks, Mrs. Clinton promised that the United States would have universal health care “if I’m president,” a deviation from her customary “when I’m president.” She said she was proud of her two-point victory in Indiana on Tuesday, but made no mention of her 14-point loss in North Carolina. Nor did she speak the name of her rival, Senator Barack Obama, or even refer to him as “my opponent,” as she ordinarily does.

Her remarks on the steps of 19th-century McMurran Hall on the main street of town were an abridged cut-and-paste job of her standard stump speech. It was not her most fluid effort. While discussing incentives for education and public service, she took a sharp detour into trade policy and vowed to get tough with oil-producing nations before circling back to preschool programs. But the modestly sized audience applauded at the appropriate times and, except for an unusually large and at times vocal contingent of Obama supporters in the crowd, the appearance went off without incident……….