First Question for Clinton: Be Aggressive or Lay Off?

(Via New York Times.)

The long-running series of Democratic presidential debates resumes this week after an extended hiatus. The big question is how bitter the next chapter will be.

The two dozen televised showdowns have always given a distorted glimpse of the nomination fight, which plays out in state after state on much less visible levels. But the debates offer the clearest national focus, and that means Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton must make a decision: mount a feisty new assault on Senator Barack Obama, or present a more congenial face to the public.

Mrs. Clinton has adopted both approaches at different points in the campaign, and she could justify using either when she faces off with Mr. Obama in Philadelphia on Wednesday night, six days before the Pennsylvania primary. Even her aides made clear this weekend that they did not yet know which path she would choose.

Since Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama last debated, in Cleveland on Feb. 26, she has made little discernable progress toward her goal of scoring a come-from-behind victory in the nominating contest. She won the Texas and Ohio primaries, but has fallen farther behind in the delegate race; she trailed by 97 delegates the day of the Cleveland debate, and 140 now, by the Obama campaign’s count. And she has failed to overtake Mr. Obama in most national polls, despite a brief furor over incendiary remarks by his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.

As a result, Mrs. Clinton finds herself like a basketball team trailing at game’s end and having to watch precious seconds tick off the clock. That leaves some Democratic observers predicting a serene and civil performance on her part, rather than the combative approach advocated by her chief strategist, Mark Penn, before he was ousted from that post a week ago.

Full story here.