by Rick Pearson
LAREDO, Texas—Hillary Clinton concluded her campaign tour of the Texas border country this morning, urging supporters to cast early votes while standing atop the makeshift stage of a flatbed-truck trailer at a rally outside the city’s Old City Hall.
“We’re putting together a winning team in Texas to go to the White House,” the Democratic presidential contender declared as she urged voters to cast ballots for her now, then attend precinct caucuses on March 4 that will award additional delegates.
“If you’re votes are not cast, they can’t be counted. If you’re voices aren’t raised, they can’t be heard,” she said.
Clinton thanked supporters—both voters and campaign contributors—for sticking with her as she indicated the job ahead of her in trying to upset frontrunning rival, Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, will be a difficult one.”I am only here because millions of people voted for me and hundreds of thousands have contributed and many have supported me, in tough times and easy times. Those are the kind of people that I want to support as president,” she said.
At one point, the audience shouted, “Si, se puede” in response to Clinton, which, translated into English, means, “Yes, we can,” a phrase most associated with Obama’s campaign.
In a potential tipoff to her strategy in tonight’s debate with Obama, she belittled his experience by questioning whether he could handle potential crises.
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“This election coming up on March 4 is an opportunity for you to decide who you want to hire for the hardest job in the world,” she said. “There are big differences between my opponent and myself. The choice you make is really critical. I want you to think who you want to have in the White House answering the phone at 3 o’clock in the morning when some crisis breaks out somewhere around the world.”
Clinton recounted that a woman came to the event site and waited about five hours for the opportunity to present the candidate with a rosary.
“I want to thank her and all of you for your support and for your prayers because I am asking you to vote for me for the hardest job in the world. I know that. I watched my husband. I know how hard this job is,” she said.
Clinton earned loud applause in calling for a comprehensive solution to the nation’s illegal immigration problem.
“We are going to fix this broken immigration system,” she said. “It is long past time that we quit treating the immigration system like a political football. It is time we actually brought the country together to do what must be done. Yes, we need secure borders, but we also need a path to legalization for those that worked hard.”
The night before, Clinton traveled as far south in Texas as anyone could go, greeting thousands of students at the University of Texas’s Brownsville campus at an outdoor rally.
After Laredo, Clinton headed north to Austin, the site of this evening’s one-on-one broadcast debate at the LBJ Library at the UT main campus. Though it’s the 19th debate of the Democratic presidential campaign, it is only the second time that Clinton and Obama have met face-to-face debate as the field gradually dwindled. They’ll do it once more next week in Cleveland ahead of the key March 4 primary.