Democratic rivals took aim at Hillary Clinton's leadership on health care yesterday by questioning whether she could rally the political support to pass a plan for universal coverage.
During a debate in the early voting state of Iowa, several Democrats presidential candidates implied the New York senator, who led a failed attempt at a health care overhaul as first lady 13 years ago, was not the best person to try again. They dismissed her claim she had learned from her failure.
"It's not enough to talk about efforts we've made and failed. We need to talk about people who know how to do this," Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd said.
"We've been through six years of on-the-job training. We now need leadership in the country that can truly bring people together to get this done," he said.
Ms Clinton's rivals said the fine print of their competing health care plans was less important than their ability to work with opponents, fend off corporate interests and win public support for the task.
Earlier this week Ms Clinton became the last of the top Democratic candidates to roll out a plan to overhaul the health care system and provide coverage for 47 million uninsured Americans.
Her plan would mandate coverage for uninsured Americans but maintain a role for private insurance companies in what she said would be a simplified system with more choices for consumers.
Ms Clinton said she would not repeat the mistakes of 1994 and was ready to lead a new effort