Hillary Clinton’s top priority has been changing lately depending on where she’s campaigning, a strategy that Clinton is banking on to appeal to voters in the crucial states of Ohio and Texas, which vote in primaries and caucuses on Tuesday.

In Texas, Clinton’s focused on national security. Her “3 a.m.” television ad, which asks voters who they trust to manage a crisis, hit the airwaves on Friday and her campaign is emphasizing the issue in many discussions in the Lone Star State.

In Ohio on Sunday, Clinton told a sparsely attended but enthusiastic rally in Austintown that “the economy is the No. 1 issue in this campaign.”

While some might call this rhetorical schizophrenia, it’s about a specific targeting strategy that will determine whether Clinton emerges from Super Tuesday 2 as a credible candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination.

With 11 straight losses lending a funereal air to her campaign in the last week, Clinton has soldiered on and still holds a narrow lead against Barack Obama in Ohio. She appears to have slightly narrowed the gap in Texas.

Clinton’s gambling on national security to draw conservative so-called “Yellow Dog Democrats” in east and central-west Texas. The campaign is counting on this breed of voter supporting Clinton after re-evaluating Obama’s credentials and his backbone to withstand the rigors of a national security crisis.

“We’re on our turf now,” said a senior Clinton adviser, referring to the national security debate.

In Ohio, where the “3 a.m.” ad is not running at all (it’s only airing sporadically in Texas), the economy rules and the good news for Clinton is in Sunday’s Cleveland Plain Dealer poll, which puts Clinton up 47 percent to 43 percent over Obama.

The issue of free trade does not seem to be hurting Clinton as hard as advisers feared it might.

“The issue should be killing us and it’s not,” a top Clinton field organizer in Ohio told FOX News.

The Plain Dealer poll showed Obama and Clinton essentially split on the North American Free Trade Agreement, a trade deal passed during Bill Clinton’s presidency and widely blamed for bleeding the state of tens of thousands of manufacturing jobs.

Obama has stoked anti-NAFTA sentiments across the state and reads widely from praiseworthy comments Clinton has uttered in the past.

A tie on NAFTA gives Clinton a fighting chance to win Ohio, owing to her solid support among women and growing support among low-income white men.

Obama’s counter-strategy is to out-organize Clinton on the ground. Volunteers are pouring into Ohio from across the country — largely on their own dime — to canvass for Obama this weekend. The campaign’s goal is to knock on 1 million doors this weekend.

Obama also has the grassroots support of the Service Employees International Union and the United Food and Commercial Workers Union — big assets in the state’s larger cities.

In Texas, Obama’s camp says it is not worrying about the national security debate.

“Our judgment on this issue in the campaign has been just as solid as Obama’s in opposing the Iraq war,” a senior adviser said. “We know Democrats were drawn to us because of Barack’s opposition to the war and this gives an opportunity to remind Democrats of that.”

Obama has better ground forces in Texas also — at least three times as many on-the-ground volunteers as Clinton — and he is far better prepared to organize and win the post-primary caucuses on Tuesday evening.

The key for Obama is to win the popular vote and delegates distributed through primary and caucus returns and to deny Clinton any opportunity to diminish the Texas results by blaming the complicated two-step primary and caucus process — unique on the election calendar this year. If Clinton only extracts a victory in Ohio on Tuesday, Obama will argue she’s failed her own Texas-Ohio test and ought to contemplate leaving the race.

Top Democrats who thought it likely March 4 would be Clinton’s last stand now fret that close contests in Ohio and Texas could leave the outcome opaque and give Clinton a reason to fight on — especially after raising $35 million in February.

“She’ll say I raised all that money and a million dollars a day on the Internet and those people don’t want me to quit,” a top Democratic strategist said.

Another Democrat who served in the Clinton administration but has soured on the Clinton political machine said: “Too much time since the last vote (the Feb. 19 Wisconsin primary) has allowed Hillary to pick herself up off the floor.”

A muddled Super Tuesday Part 2 could send the campaign into a seven-week trek through Pennsylvania before its April 22 primary.

Sen. Obama came to the back of the press plane to talk informally about anything but politics. Family time - or the lack of it- and the Fishbowl for his two daughters if he wins the presidency dominated the brief encounter. 

http://media2.foxnews.com/030308/030308_obama_plane_MPEG4.mp4

Continuing FOX News’ investigaton of the anecdote Sen. Barack Obama told about an Army captain who served in Afghanistan but suffered from an under-mannered platoon and inadequate equipment and was forced to cannibalize a confiscated Taliban weapon to carry out their mission, I put a series of questions to Obama’s campaign — many of them prompted by conversations I had via e-mail with Ollie North.

North suggested FOX News inquire when Obama first learned of the anecdote and if, as would be typical, if his Senate office filed a congressional inquiry with the Army liaison office on Capitol Hill and, if so, what the dispositionof that inquiry was.

The Obama campaign, through a spokesman and a senior adviser, informed FOX News of the following facts:

First, the Army captain met with Obama in the summer of 2007. It was a one-on-one meeting but the captain did not discuss the anecdote about his experience in Afghanistan and the shortage of men, equipment and parts in his mission against the Taliban.

Second, the Obama campaign learned at a staff level of the Afghanistan “anecdote” from the captain — who remains unidentified but whom FOX News has spoken with — “over the last few weeks” and developed a clear understanding of it “in recent days leading up to the debate,” according to a senior adviser. No specific date was provided. Obama then learned of the anecdote just before the Thursday debate, though again no specific date was provided.

Third, because the campaign learned of the Afghanistan “anecdote” only recently, the campaign says no congressional inquiry was initiated and therefore no documentary evidence of the anecdote or follow-up with anyone in the Defense Department is available.

Fourth, the Obama campaign cannot say when the Afghanistan “anecdote” occurred. Staff tells FOX News the captain was deployed from 2003 and into 2004 but cannot provide a date or even range of dates within which the episode that gave rise to the anecdote occurred.

Chief campaign spokesman Bill Burton provided this on-the-record statement:

“Senator Obama’s staff learned the details surrounding this deployment over the course of the last few weeks. Senator Obama and his staff have been reaching out to mid-level military officers because they are the most deployed and battle-tested in a generation, and they offer an indispensable view of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the challenges facing our military. Senator Obama met with this Army captain over the summer, but only recently learned of this particular story through his staff.

“Since this deployment took place nearly five years ago in 2003, the Senate office did not file a congressional inquiry with the Pentagon. This anecdote underscores the strain on resources for Afghanistan as a result of the invasion of Iraq, a situation that has been well documented and that should not surprise close observers of the war in Afghanistan. Senator Obama has consistently underscored the impact that the war in Iraq has had on our ability to complete the mission in Afghanistan. He introduced legislation over a year ago to end the war in Iraq, and to redeploy appropriate military resources to Afghanistan to support our efforts there. He will continue to call for more attention — including military resources — for Afghanistan, and he will provide those resources when he is commander-in-chief.”

For those of you Bourbon Room loyalists, you well remember — or may have been trying to forget — my near-rhapsodic take on the Los Angeles debate, the first Hillary Clinton-Barack Obama tilt of the campaign.

No need to rhapsodize tonight. Instead of my thoughts, tonight I will pose a series of questions that may help us decide what mattered most and how the debate did or did not change the arc of this fascinating and historic Democratic pursuit of the presidency.

Note: Some questions I will answer for you. Have no fear, the answers will lead to other questions The Bourbon Room promises not to answer.

Here we go.

1. What does camp Clinton consider THE most important moment of the debate?

The lengthy and “passionate” exchange over universal health care?

No.

The debate over whether or not to impose a five-year moratorium on adjustable rate mortgages, as Clinton proposes and Obama opposes?

No.

The debate over how Clinton would restore “fiscal discipline” by ending Bush tax breaks for the wealthy and ending the Iraq war to invest in new infrastructure and start new “clean green jobs”?

No.

The answer came from Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson in the form of an e-mail sent to reporters at 9:57 p.m. EST, mere moments after the debate ended. The full contents of the Wolfson e-mail are reprinted here:

“What we saw in the final moments in that debate is why Hillary Clinton is the next president of the United States. Her strength, her experience, her compassion. She’s tested and ready. It was the moment she retook the reins of this race and showed women and men why she is the best choice.”

Question: Do you agree and do you see anything relevant at all in the near-instantaneous framing of the “moment” by Sen. Clinton’s campaign?

Question: Does the following e-mail sent to reporters at 10:15 p.m. EST by Bill Burton, national spokesman for Barack Obama’s campaign, carry any weight with you?

“Clinton tonight: You know, whatever happens, we’re going to be fine. You know, we have strong support from our families and our friends. I just hope that we’ll be able to say the same thing about the American people. And that’s what this election should be about.”

The Burton e-mail then includes this quote from John Edwards: “What’s not at stake are any of us. All of us are going to be just fine no matter what happens in this election. But what’s at stake is whether America is going to be fine.” The quote comes from a Democratic candidate debate on Dec. 13, 2007.

UPDATE from the Obama campaign at 11:35 p.m. EST:

Burton sent this e-mail: Yet another line lifted for what was her “best moment.”

Clinton tonight: “You know, the hits I’ve taken in life are nothing compared to what goes on every single day in the lives of people across our country. And I resolved at a very young age that I’d been blessed and that I was called upon by my faith and by my upbringing to do what I could to give others the same opportunities and blessings that I took for granted. That’s what gets me up in the morning. That’s what motivates me in this campaign.”

President Clinton: “When the history of this campaign is written, they may say, well, Bill Clinton took a lot of hits in this campaign. The hits that I took in this election are nothing compared to the hits that people in this state and country are taking every day of their lives under this administration (Aug. 14, 2000).

Question: Does this second Obama e-mail on the Clinton “moment” matter to you or suggest anything to you about the degree of concern camp Obama has about the “moment”?

Which leads to a related question. Did you consider Clinton’s line against Obama on the question of lifting lines (or trading them) from/with Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick memorable? To jog your memory Clinton said: “That’s not change you can believe in, that’s change you can Xerox.”

Next question. Do you remember Clinton saying more frequently she agreed with Obama or Obama saying more frequently that he agreed with Clinton? Your answer, based on your recollection of the debate is more important than the actual answer (which, to be honest, The Bourbon Room doesn’t have).

The related question is this: Generally, considering the current context of the race and Obama’s 11 straight victories (Obama won the Democrats Abroad primary today), does Clinton agreement with Obama on issues do more for Obama than his agreement with her on issues?

Question: Does it matter to you that in a 2003 questionnaire, Obama said he favored normalizing relations with Cuba (http://blogs.suntimes.com/sweet/2007/12/sweet_column_obamas_2003_iviip.html), but tonight said he would not normalize relations with Cuba unless it pursues human rights and democratic reforms.

Question: Do you think the gap between Clinton and Obama narrowed or expanded on whether the next president should negotiate directly with U.S. enemies such Cuba, Iran and North Korea?

Question: Can you remember a significant difference that emerged in nearly 10 minutes of debate over how to revive the U.S. economy?

Question: Do you understand the difference between Clinton and Obama on the pursuit of universal health care coverage? Does it strike you as an angels-on-the-head-of-a-pin difference or a crucial philosophical divide?

Question: Do you agree or disagree with Obama’s assertion the Iraq troop surge represents a “tactical victory” that is hopelessly ensnared in major “strategic blunder”?

Question: Do you believe Obama’s surge answer, if he’s the Democratic nominee, will be viewed as one of strength in the inevitable Iraq debates with Sen. John McCain?

Question: Which is the logical sequence in a republic as politically complex as ours: change then solutions, or solutions then change?

Question: Did Obama look to you more or less presidential than in the previous 18 debates?

Question: Did you think Clinton faced the hardest debate of this campaign in light of her poor post-Super Tuesday performances and, as such, deserves higher marks for pluck, poise and determination?

Question: Did either Obama or Clinton answer the final “crisis” question and does that matter to you?

The answers are yours. The election is yours, especially in Texas, Ohio, Rhode Island and Vermont on March 4 (remember Texans, early voting is occurring NOW).

The Clinton campaign denied Tuesday it would make any effort to coax pledged Barack Obama delegates to switch to Hillary Clinton at the Democratic National Convention.

“We have not, are not and will not pursue the pledged delegates of Barack Obama. We think Sen. Obama’s campaign owes you all a clear answer as to whether they will pursue our pledged delegates.”

The Clinton camp is sensitive to this topic because it wants to avoid any appearance of pursuing a win-at-all-costs strategy, something the Obama camp has accused it of as debate has intensified over the role superdelegates should play in the pitched nomination fight.

Clinton’s camp argues the 795 superdelegates should support the candidate they believe would be the best nominee, not necessarily the candidate who has won the most contests, votes or pledged delegates. The Obama camp believes just the opposite and has said Clinton can’t hope to narrow the 136-delegate lead it says it has amassed in pledged delegates.

Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton told FOX News, “Of course we won’t do that.”

Burton said the real question is why the Clinton camp “didn’t deny” they had a pledged delegate strategy.

The Politico.com reported Tuesday that an unnamed senior Clinton official said the campaign would try to persuade pledged delegates committed to Obama to switch to Clinton. Under party rules, pledged delegates - despite their title - can change their allegiance even before the first balllot is cast.

Generally, pledged delegates stick with the candidate they are pledged to as results are tallied in primaries and caucuses.

Any attempt to fight over pledged delegates could generate micro-political wars on the convention floor and introduce a degree of chaos not seen in party conventions in a generation.

In a conference call today, Harold Ickes, party operative for 40 years and former White House deputy chief to President Clinton, boldly predicted Hillary Clinton will win the Democratic nomination and do so soon after the last party primary on June 7 in Puerto Rico.

“We’re going to win this nomination,” Ickes said. “You’re not going to see this go to the convention floor.”

Ickes predicted Clinton and Illinois Sen. Barack Obama will run “neck-and-neck” in the 18 remaining state and territorial primaries and caucuses and that there will be a “minuscule amount of difference” between the two in pledged delegates and that so-called Super Delegates will determine the outcome and side in larger numbers for Clinton.

Ickes denounced the term Super Delegates and said the Clinton camp henceforth will refer to them as “automatic delegates.”

“The Fourth Estate created the term Super Delegate,” Ickes said, even though Democrats have used the Super Delegate term widely in the roiling debate of their allegiances and responsibilities in the increasingly competitive and high-stakes battle for Democratic presidential nomination. “They don’t have super powers,” Ickes said of the Super Delegates. “It’s one-person, one-vote. They have no more power than any other delegate. But they do have a sense of what it takes to get elected.”

He said Super Delegates must “exercise their best judgment” about who can win the White House.

“They are closely in touch with the issues and ideas of the jurisdiction they represent and they are as much or more in touch than delegates won or recruited by presidential campaigns.”

In essence, Ickes argued the party 795 Super Delegates (Connecticut Independent-Democrat Sen. Joe Lieberman was stripped of his Super Delegate status recently), were in a better position to assess electability and suitability for the presidency than party regulars who will attend the national convention in late August as pledged delegates won through elections in either primaries or caucuses.

Many top Democrats, among them House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, have said Super Delegates should follow the will of voters expressed through primaries and caucuses and not trump those votes.

Ickes said Super Delegates were created to augment the elections process and those delegates are duty-bound by rule and precedent to weigh all considerations - not just votes taken in primaries or caucuses before rendering a judgment.

Obama currently leads Clinton by 136 in pledged delegates but trails by 95 in Super Delegates, according to calculations given by both campaigns.

“Hillary will end up with more automatic delegates than Obama,” Ickes said. The number of elections won by Obama is “irrelevant to the obligations of automatic delegates.”

Ickes said he was “too dim of mind” to understand how some might wonder if the Clinton campaign might lure Super Delegates with promises of political favors. “I don’t even understand what that is referring to,” Ickes said, declining to guarantee the campaign will use no promises of tangible benefits to Super Delegates to win them to Clinton’s campaign.

Ickes also quoted top Obama adviser David Axelrod as saying Super Delegates “should vote for what’s best for party and country.”

Axelrod meant Super Delegates should follow the will of voters expressed through primaries and caucuses, but the Clinton campaign interprets it to mean exercise broader judgment linked to larger political aims - specifically choosing Clinton over Obama as the more battle-hardened Democrat capable of winning in November.

“Deciding who you should support, these are not easy judgments. The question is who can make a good and possibly great president. This is a political process.”

I just returned from Ohio on Hillary Clinton’s plane and wanted to offer some broad observations about the weekend before the Wisconsin and Hawaii primaries.

First, no one besides Chelsea is campaigning in Hawaii (revealing if nothing else Chelsea’s brilliant ability to manipulate the Clinton schedulers. Think about it, Chelsea’s in Hawaii and the former leader of the free world is in Texarkana and Nacogdoches).

But I digress. After several interviews with senior Clinton aides this must should be known about Wisconsin — they don’t expect to win it and they don’t expect it be particularly close. Sen. Clinton will step foot for the first time in Wisconsin tomorrow night for the Founder’s Dinner (a party dinner and “big” event). Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama will both speak, marking the closest thing Wisconsin Democrats will see to a one-on-one debate (meaning not very close at all).

Clinton ran a second attack ad today on Obama. Outwardly, it would appear the ad buys are designed to demonstrate a serious effort in Wisconsin. They do not. The ads are designed to push up Obama’s negatives in Wisconsin and Ohio and Texas (how, you might reasonably ask?). The national media (your faithful correspondent included) have dutifully reported on the ads as have interested Ohio and Texas reporters. Thus the Wisconsin ads have echoed a bit in Hillary’s big March 4 states and at a relatively cheap price of Wisconsin media (much cheaper than Houston, Dallas, or Cleveland).

Obama can and has reasonably asked what gives Clinton the right to attack him in Wisconsin when she hasn’t even campaigned there. Obama’s working the state hard and seeks first and foremost to win blue-collar Democrats in and around Janesville, Milwaukee, Kenosha and elsewhere to prove to blue-collar Ohio Democrats that his message resonates in Wisconsin.

In this way, Obama wants what happens in Wisconsin Tuesday to reverberate in Ohio — in a way more memorably than Clinton’s attack ads. Obama’s methodical approach is first about victories and second about boosting the size of those victories. Consider this: since Super Tuesday the smallest Obama margin of victory was 19 points in the Feb. 10 Maine caucuses.

Running up the score garners delegates, momentum, slack-jawed media coverage (my jaw excluded), and believers. That’s what Obama wants from Wisconsin and Hawaii - a big vote differential and as many pledged delegates as he can collect. Remember, Obama expects a Clinton fight over Superdelegates and the Obama camp wants a three-pronged counter argument: he’s won more contests, more votes, and more pledged delegates. That’s why running up the score in Wisconsin and Hawaii matters and why Clinton’s visits from Saturday through Monday and the ad buys are designed to minimize the damage — hold back the rout, in other words.

Meanwhile, Bill Clinton will be in Ohio Sunday and since he, like Hillary, has picked up the pace of attacks on Obama, it’s worth keeping an ear peeled for Bill. The former president’s attacks have not been well-received, generally and in Ohio he brings one notable albatross — NAFTA.

Blue collar Ohio Democrats see NAFTA as the cause of tens of thousands of manufacturing job loses throughout the state. Permanent trade status with China is a bird of a similar feather and equally loathed. Bill Clinton had war rooms built to pass both and both are inextricably linked to his economic legacy, a legacy Hillary increasingly leans on to differentiate her experience and record from Obama’s. NAFTA and permanent trade with China maker Clinton appearances in Ohio on Hillary’s behalf a bit cumbersome - especially as Hillary tries to downplay any previous enthusiasm she displayed about free trade.

Terry McAullife’s thoughts Super Tuesday evening

Wonder what goes into a live shot at a campaign event? Check out a quick snapshot below — including the constant blackberry messaging and, in this case, a timely pizza delivery — and, of course, an actual politics hit for Fox Report with Shepard Smith.

Small Venue, Small Expectations? Major gives a tour of the room the Clinton campaign picked for her post-primary celebration — and explains what it says about the state of the campaign.