"... Mrs. Clinton said matter-of-factly. 'I’m asking people to support me because I think I’m the most qualified, experienced, and ready person to be the president and the commander in chief.'"

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Hillary Clinton Is Calm, Cool and Effective
By Jonathan Martin, February 12, 2016

Facing off against Senator Bernie Sanders on Thursday night, Hillary Clinton did not comport herself like someone who had just suffered a landslide loss in New Hampshire. She did not raise her voice or express anger. She did not demonize Mr. Sanders or suggest he would be a dangerous choice for Democrats. She remained calm as he pungently sought to highlight their differences.

Instead, she behaved like someone heading into Nevada and South Carolina with every reason to be confident and little to fear but her own missteps.

A week after loudly confronting Mr. Sanders in a debate for perpetrating what she called a “very artful smear” against her, Mrs. Clinton took a far more strategic approach. She sought to portray her political approach as different from that of Mr. Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist, but her tone was firm but not panicked. For much of the night, a viewer could have been forgiven for thinking that it was Mr. Sanders who was grappling with the way forward after being handed a 22-point loss two nights earlier — and Mrs. Clinton who was riding high.

He was often the aggressor, criticizing Mrs. Clinton over trade, immigration, Social Security, her views on regime change, and even her ties to former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger.

Perhaps anticipating that Mrs. Clinton would focus her campaign on energizing women and minorities, Mr. Sanders, who has emphasized what he calls the “rigged economy,” came well prepared to discuss issues important to those constituencies.

Her new goal, it seemed clear from her opening and closing statements, was to reframe Mr. Sanders, and do it in a tight and uncomfortable box: as a candidate fixated on one issue, economic inequality, who has little to say about other important issues. But when the debate turned to precisely those issues, and Mr. Sanders discussed his voting record on abortion rights and railed against “a broken criminal justice system,” Mrs. Clinton indirectly challenged him, highlighting her leadership on women’s issues and her backing from major abortion rights groups.

She did not even raise the issue of guns, on which Mr. Sanders is most vulnerable to attack from Mrs. Clinton on his left, until the debate’s 65th minute.

The harshest critiques she had for Mr. Sanders were delivered coolly. She portrayed him as neither forthright nor realistic about how much his ideals would cost, and as an interloper in the Democratic Party who did not deserve to carry on the unfinished agenda of President Obama.

And she suggested that as often as he may point to his superior judgment in opposing the authorization of the use of force in Iraq in 2002, he was unprepared to deal with the wider global challenges the next president will face. “I do not believe that a vote in 2002 is a plan to defeat ISIS in 2016,” she said succinctly.

Instead of dismissing Mr. Sanders’s plan for free college tuition as wrongheaded, she argued that it was unworkable.

“Senator Sanders’s plan really rests on making sure that governors like Scott Walker contribute $23 billion on the first day to make college free,” she said, invoking Wisconsin’s conservative governor, who slashed $250 million from the University of Wisconsin system last year. “I am a little skeptical about your governor actually caring enough about higher education to make any kind of commitment like that.”

It was a striking recalibration, and made for a far different presence compared with the combative posture Mrs. Clinton struck at last week’s debate and in the closing days in New Hampshire. And it may ultimately prove more effective.

“Hillary Clinton took an entirely different tone tonight, and it played well,” said Mr. Obama’s former strategist, David Axelrod. “Gone were the harsh attacks and strident tone of last week and in their place was a measured, respectful approach toward Sanders, even in the scrums.”

In a debate that dealt extensively with matters relating to race and gender — the very issues that Mrs. Clinton has indicated she would focus on as the campaign turns from Iowa and New Hampshire to the more diverse Nevada and South Carolina — she only glancingly critiqued Mr. Sanders.

It was not until her closing statement that she said indirectly what her campaign had hinted was coming against Mr. Sanders. “I am not a single-issue candidate, and I do not believe we live in a single-issue country,” she said, citing the importance of addressing racism, sexism and gay rights.

The most aggressive Mrs. Clinton got with Mr. Sanders was not over the issues she hopes will bolster her with such core Democratic constituencies as blacks, Hispanics, women, and gay men and lesbians. It was when she brought up the president whom these voters have twice played a crucial role in electing to the White House.

Mrs. Clinton noted that Mr. Sanders had called President Obama “weak” and “disappointing,” and even argued that he deserved a primary challenger in 2012. “Those kinds of personal assessments and charges are ones that I find particularly troubling,” she said.

Mrs. Clinton’s performance suggested that she believed that the harsher attacks leveled at Mr. Sanders, and at his youthful supporters, by some of her allies — including former Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright — might have been a mistake.

Ms. Albright said that there was “a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other,” a line Mrs. Clinton was called upon to address from the debate stage.

“I’m not asking people to support me because I’m a woman,” Mrs. Clinton said matter-of-factly. “I’m asking people to support me because I think I’m the most qualified, experienced, and ready person to be the president and the commander in chief.”
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