At debate, Clinton seeks rebound

By Steve Holland

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - After a difficult couple of weeks, Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton will attempt to regain her footing on Thursday night at a campaign debate with her rivals.

The increasingly combative Democratic candidates gather in Las Vegas for a two-hour, televised debate beginning at 8 p.m. EST (0100 GMT) with just seven weeks left before Iowa starts Americans down the path toward the November 4, 2008, presidential election.

Ahead of the debate, the Clinton campaign belittled her challengers for "shifting to a negative attack strategy" and claimed she is so strong in so many states, including several the Democrats lost in 2004, that she would win a landslide victory over the top Republican, Rudy Giuliani.

"In fact, if the election were held tomorrow, Hillary would win 360 electoral votes compared with 178 electoral votes for Rudy Giuliani," Clinton chief strategist Mark Penn wrote in a campaign memo.

It takes 270 electoral votes from the states to win the presidency.

Clinton, a senator from New York, was widely seen to have stumbled at the last debate, on October 30 in Philadelphia, when her equivocating answers on Iraq, Social Security and illegal immigration prompted charges of double-talk from top rivals Barack Obama and John Edwards.

In the days that followed, the Clinton campaign accused her male rivals of "piling on" her and talked about competing in "the all-boys' club of presidential politics" -- prompting accusations she was trying to play the role of female victim.

Then last week, the Clinton campaign was caught planting a question about global warming through a college student in the audience at a campaign event in Newton, Iowa. Once the incident came to light, Clinton said she had not been aware of such a practice and would not tolerate it.